Poststructuralism and After

This page intentionally left blank

Poststructuralism and After
Structure, Subjectivity and Power

David R. Howarth
Reader in Social and Political Theory, Department of Government,
University of Essex, UK
© David R. Howarth 2013
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-26697-2
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2013 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN 978-1-349-44321-5 ISBN 978-1-137-26698-9 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/9781137266989

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements vi

Introduction 1

1 The Poststructuralist Project 24

2 Problematizing Poststructuralism 56

3 Ontological Bearings 87

4 Deconstructing Structure and Agency 116

5 Structure, Agency, and Affect 150

6 Rethinking Power and Domination 187

7 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 225

Conclusion 265

Notes 277

Bibliography 293

Index 317

v
Preface and Acknowledgements

This book has taken a long time to finish. It was first commissioned
by Ian Craib as part of his ‘Traditions in Social Theory’ series, and
its overall form and content was then developed by the helpful prod-
dings of Rob Stones. Initially conceived to include a discussion of
postmodernism, as well as developments in poststructuralist theory, it
was quickly evident that this was much too big a brief for one volume.
Indeed, even the attempt to discuss the ever-expanding contributions
in the poststructuralist tradition of theorizing proved to be a daunting,
if not overwhelming, task. Not only are the poststructuralist contribu-
tions in the fields of social and political theory extensive, complex,
and increasingly diverse, but they have tended to break down tradi-
tional disciplinary boundaries in the human and social sciences, whilst
insinuating themselves in each of them.
At the same time, I began to harbour a growing scepticism about
the uses and abuses of the concept of postmodernism in social the-
ory, as well as the acrimonious and largely unproductive debates the
term has provoked. At the very least, in my view, postmodernism
and poststructuralism are not the same concepts, nor do they desig-
nate a common style of thinking and approach in the social sciences.
As the book developed, it also became evident that my focus on the
dialectics of structure and agency, power and domination, affect and
subjectivity was too narrowly focussed to serve as a general discussion
of poststructuralist theory, even when restricted to social and political
theory. After discussions with my editors, it was decided that this mono-
graph would be accompanied by a more introductory text on selected
topics in poststructuralism and social theory.
In many senses, Poststructuralism and After: Structure, Subjectivity and
Power represents the culmination of an ongoing research project that
stretches back to my first endeavours to use Ernesto Laclau and Chantal
Mouffe’s poststructuralist interpretation of Marxist theory to analyse
aspects of South African politics under apartheid domination and then
(in close collaboration with Steven Griggs) to explore the dynamics of
environmental movements and policymaking practices in the field of
UK aviation. A number of arguments in this book are intended to flesh
out and build upon some of the ontological assumptions and theoretical

vi
 Preface and Acknowledgements vii

insights that were set out in earlier texts, especially the Logics of Critical
Explanation in Social and Political Theory, which I co-wrote with Jason
Glynos. They have also been enriched by my empirical study of the pol-
itics of UK airports over the last 10 or 15 years, which I have conducted
with Steven Griggs; our thoughts on this topic are presented in The Pol-
itics of Airport Expansion in the United Kingdom: Hegemony, Policy and the
Rhetoric of ‘Sustainable Aviation, as well as other articles and chapters.
Traces and reiterations of the ideas that were adumbrated in these books,
and in previous and subsequent journal articles, are evident at various
places in Poststructuralism and After, and they are acknowledged in the
text. I would like to express my gratitude to Ernesto Laclau and Chantal
Mouffe, for disclosing these new possibilities in the Marxist tradition,
and to Jason Glynos and Steven Griggs for helping me to develop and
apply poststructuralist political theory in the way I have.
In developing my arguments, I have been fortunate to benefit from
questions, comments, and criticisms from a number of people in various
forums. At the outset, I would like to thank the two anonymous readers
of my original manuscript, who offered many important insights and
thoughts about the arguments put forward in this book. The materials
that form the problematization of poststructuralism and the elabora-
tion of the poststructuralist project in the first two chapters have been
discussed in a number of public workshops and seminars. Elements
of the approach were presented at an Expert Seminar on Critical Dis-
course Analysis in October 2008, which was convened in the Centre for
Theoretical Studies at the University of Essex. It formed part of an ESRC-
sponsored Seminar Series on Methodological Innovation. Others were
elaborated in a series of lectures and seminars presented at Roskilde Uni-
versity in Denmark and Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand.
Allan Hansen, Peter Kitchenman, Eva Sørensen, and Jacob Torfing made
our visits doubly enjoyable. Steven Griggs and I presented lectures and
workshops on these themes at Charles University in Prague in March
2011 and at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin in October
2012; our thanks to Anna Durnova and Daria Isachenko for inviting
us. My thanks to the participants of these seminars for their challenging
questions and for the stimulating discussions they provoked.
With respect to my discussion of ontology, which is examined
in Chapter 3, I presented some initial thoughts on the problem of
immanence and transcendence in contemporary discussions of ontol-
ogy and politics at the Annual American Political Science Association
Conference in Washington in 2005. William Connolly, Lars Tønder,
Daniel Smith, and Jodie Dean offered helpful thoughts and comments
viii Preface and Acknowledgements

on the ideas presented there. I also discussed some of the strengths and
potential weaknesses of the ‘new materialism’ at the annual Western
Political Science Association conference in April 2011, as well as a
keynote address at the University of Hamburg in July of the same year.
I am grateful to Jane Bennett, William Connolly, Joshua Dienstag, Lars
Tønder, and Urs Stäheli for their very useful reflections and comments.
Questions about the importance of practice, which are also discussed
in the chapter on ontology, were discussed in a seminar convened by
the Centre for Theoretical Studies on ‘Policy as Practice’ in May 2012.
I would like to thank Christian Bueger, Richard Freeman, Steven Griggs,
David Laws, Victoria Loughlan, Jo Maybin, Tamara Metze, Aletta Norval,
Ted Schatzki, Merlijn van Hulst, and Henk Wagenaar for providing an
opportunity to explore the connections between poststructuralism and
contemporary ‘practice theory’.
In many respects, the problem of structure and agency, and its inti-
mate connection to our understanding of human affect and subjectivity,
as well questions about power, domination, and hegemony, constitutes
the heart of Poststructuralism and After. Some of the arguments that are
presented in this regard in Chapters 4–6 were discussed at the Annual
PSA Conference in Bath in April 2007 in a discussion of interpretivist
approaches to political analysis, and this essay (co-authored with Jason
Glynos) was published in Political Studies Review in 2008. I would like
to thank Mark Bevir and Rod Rhodes for their verbal and written
comments on the ideas that were developed in this debate. Further
opportunities to elaborate on the theme of structure, agency, and power
were provided by invitations to present keynote addresses at the Fourth
Annual Interpretivist Conference in Kassel in June 2009 and to deliver
the Annual Hinkley Lecture at Johns Hopkins University in April 2010.
Frank Fischer, Frank Nullmeier, Bob Jessop, and Dvora Yanow offered
helpful comments and criticisms. A published version of these addresses
appeared in Critical Policy Studies in 2010. Some of the thoughts on
hegemony were first elaborated in a paper entitled ‘Deconstructing the
Rhetoric of Sustainable Aviation in the UK’, which was delivered to the
Annual PSA Conference at Manchester in April 2009.
My initial thoughts on French regulation theory and Foucauldian
ideas of governmentality, which are developed in Chapter 6, were pre-
sented at a Workshop on the Financial Crisis at Cardiff University in
May 2009. Christopher Norris, Colin Wight, and Hugh Willmott made
helpful comments on the paper and approach employed. An earlier
version was co-written with Steven Griggs and was applied to the prob-
lem of ‘sustainable aviation’, whilst a later version was presented to
 Preface and Acknowledgements ix

graduate students at Johns Hopkins University in the spring of 2010,

where I taught a course on Rethinking State-Capitalism with William
Connolly. It goes without saying that the course and its participants
proved highly stimulating and helpful to me in preparing this new
draft of the paper. A more final and lengthy version was presented
at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association
Conference in Washington in September 2010. I would like to thank
Jane Bennett, Jairus Grove, Steven Griggs, and Aletta Norval for their
thoughts and comments on the paper. Some of the ideas and thoughts
for my engagement with the politics of identity/difference, which con-
stitutes Chapter 7 of the book, were first presented as a keynote address
entitled ‘Identity, Identification, and Political Subjectivity’. The paper
was originally delivered at the Identities under Construction Con-
ference in October 2008 at the University of Liège. Nico Carpentier
and Erik Spinoy were wonderful hosts and offered helpful comments
and thoughts about the paper. Some of the thoughts on the rela-
tionship between identities and interests were first aired in an article
(co-authored with Steven Griggs), which was published in Mobiliza-
tion in 2002. Other parts of this chapter, especially those dealing with
the intertwining of interests, identities and ideas, were presented at
a Workshop on ‘The Role of Ideas in Welfare State Change: Critical
Realist Analysis versus Poststructuralist and Interpretative Approaches’
at Leiden University in November 2012. I would like to thank Anja
Eleveld for convening this workshop and for raising many interesting
questions, both in her Doctoral Thesis and in the seminar discus-
sions. Of course, the final responsibility for the arguments and claims
developed in this book are mine, as are the remaining difficulties and
tensions.
Throughout this period, I have benefitted immensely from my inter-
actions with the students enrolled on the Doctoral Programme in
Ideology and Discourse Analysis in the Department of Government at
the University of Essex; many of the ideas put forward in the book were
first presented and discussed in the doctoral seminars convened by this
programme. Their comments and criticisms have always spurred me to
try and clarify my thoughts and arguments. I would also like to thank
the participants who attended the Introduction to Discourse Theory and
Applying Discourse Theory courses at the Essex Summer School, which
I have in the past co-taught with Jason Glynos and Aletta Norval. Peter
Josse has done a splendid job in helping me to edit the final text and
compile the final bibliography. I would like to thank the production
team at Palgrave Macmillan for their patience and support in getting my
x Preface and Acknowledgements

manuscript into print. My thanks also to Cherline Daniel and her team
for their help and attention in copy-editing my manuscript and prepar-
ing the index. My final and most heartfelt thanks are to Aletta Norval
and James Howarth for putting up with the ‘trials and tribulations’ that
have often accompanied the production of this book.
Introduction

Since the 1960s, poststructuralists in various fields have interrogated a

host of social, cultural, and political phenomena in different domains,
whilst seeking to provide critical explanations of the various puzzles
that often arise from these problematizations. Perhaps it is a bit too far-
fetched to claim that ‘We’re all poststructuralists now!’, thus echoing the
once common refrain about the pervasive influence of Marxist theory
in shaping our view of society, even though its assumptions about the
determining role of the economy in social life, or the reduction of social
identities to class structures and relationships, were not universally
accepted. Yet I do think it is true to say that many of the problems that
are addressed by poststructuralists, as well as the various answers they
advance, continue to make a significant contribution to our understand-
ing of social phenomena. What is more, poststructuralists also provide
important conceptual resources for other more mainstream traditions
of social and political theory in their efforts to elucidate the social
world, and they caution against problematic or essentialist paradigms.
This is certainly the view of Francois Dosse, the leading historian of the
structuralist and poststructuralist movements, who argues that despite
‘the dead ends’ into which these approaches have run on occasion, they
have ‘changed the way we consider human society so much that it is no
longer even possible to think without taking the structuralist revolution
into account’ (Dosse, 1997, p. xxiii).
More precisely, poststructuralists have inquired into the construc-
tion, form, and role of different social and political identities in various
contexts, whether these identities are of a class, ethnic, gender, racial,
national, or sexual character. They have also investigated the nature
of human subjectivity and its connection to the politics of identity
or difference, and they have sought to conceptualize the relationships
between structure, agency, and power. At the same time, they have led

1
2 Poststructuralism and After

critical discussions about the problem of ideology, language, and the

role of representation more generally in various contexts and social set-
tings. Proponents of poststructuralism have also intervened in central
debates about the nature of politics, democracy, and ethics. Here their
focus is not just on the key institutions and organizations that shape
social life but also on the vitally important ways in which subjects
identify with institutions, as well as the particular kinds of ethos that
inform these structural patterns and interrelationships. Finally, because
poststructuralists insist that these various concerns about identity, sub-
jectivity, power, the role of institutions and organizations, democracy,
and ethics necessarily presuppose a set of ontological, epistemologi-
cal, and methodological assumptions, they have also sought to ask and
answer a range of philosophical questions about the categories of space,
time, immanence, transcendence, contingency, form and matter, and so
forth, whilst criticizing mainstream models and methods of doing social
science.
For some, however, the very idea of a book on structuralism and
poststructuralism is an anathema. Some time ago, Anthony Giddens
argued that structuralism and poststructuralism ‘are dead traditions of
thought’, which despite ‘the promise they held in the fresh bloom
of youth . . . have ultimately failed to generate the revolution in philo-
sophical understanding and social theory that was once their pledge’
(Giddens, 1987, p. 195). Giddens is only one amongst a number of
commentators who have pronounced the death – or irrelevance – of
structuralism and poststructuralism. Indeed, he doubts whether these
styles of thinking actually exist. In his words,

many have doubted that there ever was a coherent enough body of
thought to be designated by the name ‘structuralism’, let alone the
even vaguer appellation ‘post-structuralism’ . . . After all, most of the
leading figures ordinarily lumped under these labels have rejected
these terms as applying meaningfully to their own endeavours.
(Giddens, 1987, p. 195)

A more recent critique is evident in Mark Bevir’s rather cursory

and dismissive characterizations. He argues that structuralist and
poststructuralist ways of thinking encourage historians and social sci-
entists to ‘reify language’, because they suggest that

meanings arise not from the way that agents use words but from
the relations of difference among semantic units. The meanings of
‘male’ and ‘working class’ result not from the ways in which people
 Introduction 3

use these words, but from the difference between these words and
other words. Language thus appears to be a reified semiotic code that
generates meaning quite apart from the activity of human beings.
This reified view of language then reintroduces determinism and
essentialism. A reified language determines the meanings, beliefs and
so actions of individual agents. And any particular language consists
essentially of a particular set of relations among its semantic units.
(Bevir, 2011, p. 10)

He goes on to assert that poststructuralists are unable to ‘explain

ideational change and to recognize the diversity of pluralism’; indeed
‘their emphasis on language as constitutive of all subjectivity under-
mines any appeal to agency as a source of social change’ (Bevir, 2011,
pp. 10–1).
In seeking to rebuff these and other caricatured representations of
poststructuralism, this book defends a very different thesis. Not only
do I argue that there is a distinctive structuralist and poststructuralist
tradition of thought in social theory, but it is, to use Alasdair
MacIntrye’s phrase, ‘a living tradition’ that continues to provide con-
ceptual resources to address central problems in social and political
theory (MacIntyre, 1984). Yet these background considerations raise
questions about the scope of the book, as well as its depth and inten-
sity. Should it constitute a survey and critical evaluation of the field?
Or should it form a particular contribution in its own right? Although
Poststructuralism and After does provide a brief history and overview of
the poststructuralist tradition, which is undertaken in the first couple
of chapters of the book, this is not its main aim. Instead, building on
Ernesto Laclau’s and Chantal Mouffe’s post-Marxist political theory, as
well as the different ways in which Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida
radicalize Edmund Husserl’s project of transcendental phenomenology,
the book seeks to articulate and develop poststructuralist theory by
problematizing and intervening in a series of pressing issues in contem-
porary theory and practice. In this approach, then, poststructuralism is
a particular tradition of thinking in social and political theory, which
competes with (and sometimes draws upon) rival traditions like critical
realism, structuration theory, Marxism, critical theory, rational choice
approaches to social and political analysis, and so forth.

Focus and limits

Of course, this initial decision only succeeds in pushing the question

of the limits of poststructuralism to another place. My overall strategy
4 Poststructuralism and After

in dealing with the problems of focus and intensity consists of four

connected elements. In the first place, following theorists like Foucault
and Deleuze, I adopt a problem-driven approach to social and political
theory. This approach begins with the pressing issues and puzzles that
confront subjects in the present, thus stimulating theoretical reflection
and practical engagement. For example, Foucault’s method of prob-
lematization, which brings together his archaeological and genealogical
approaches to historical and discourse analysis, and which presumes an
attention to the way ‘being gives itself to thought’, involves ‘a move-
ment of critical analysis in which one tries to see how the different
solutions to a problem have been constructed; but also how these differ-
ent solutions result from a specific form of problematization’ (Foucault,
1984, pp. 118–19). What is more, although this approach is usually
applied to empirical and practical questions in the social sciences,
I believe it is equally important in addressing theoretical issues of an
ontological, methodological, substantive, or normative kind. In short,
therefore, social and political theory in my view consists of a series of
problems, which are intrinsically important to investigate and reflect
upon. What is more, when these problems are conditionally and tem-
porarily ‘resolved’ in particular ways, they are indispensable in guiding
future empirical research, whilst also disclosing points of critique and
normative evaluation.
The number of pressing problems confronting contemporary social
and political theory is large and growing. At the same time, as many
handbooks attest, modern social theory has endeavoured to incorporate
and address this growing set of issues (e.g., Ritzer and Smart, 2001). Yet
there are two problems that have played a prominent role in defining
the character and contours of much modern social and political theory.
These are the problems of social order and the attendant concerns with
structure, agency, and power. The first problem raises an abstract ques-
tion about the emergence and reproduction of social regularities and
norms in general, as well as more narrow questions about the character
of social and political order in modern societies. As Dennis Wrong puts
it, ‘If the most fundamental question about anything is Leibniz’s “Why
is there something rather than nothing?”, then the most fundamental
question for social theory is surely “Why do human beings maintain a
regular social life rather than only minimal and occasional contacts with
one another?” ’ (Wrong, 1994, p. 1). To anticipate some of the conclu-
sions that are developed in the book, I argue that from a poststructuralist
point of view the notions of social order and system are problematized
through an inquiry into their conditions of possibility and impossibility:
 Introduction 5

attention is thus focussed on the ‘systematicity of the system’ and the

‘structurality of the structure’. At the same time, the concept of a social
order or ‘society’ is problematic because it presumes an object that is
given and complete. By contrast, poststructuralists presume that any
order or identity is essentially incomplete and contingent, such that
the existence of negativity and dislocation form the primary ontologi-
cal level of the constitution of the social. As Ernesto Laclau has insisted,
this means that the investigation and analysis of social reality ‘is not to
understand what society is, but what prevents it from being’ (Laclau, 1990,
p. 44, emphasis in original).
In a similar vein, I shall claim that the problem of structure, agency,
and power, which has attracted much attention in recent years, does
not admit of a rational, theoretical resolution. Instead, I shall argue
that the paradox of structure and agency is lodged in the very fab-
ric of our social relations and must therefore be tarried or negotiated
with, rather than transcended. This starting point, coupled with other
resources drawn from poststructuralist theory, enables the elaboration
of a more dynamic account of subjectivity and agency, and their com-
plex intersection with incomplete social structures. It also lays the basis
for a rethinking of questions pertaining to the construction of identities
and the connection between identities and interests.
As I have already implied, my second response to the problem of
demarcation is to restrict the scope of the book to developments within
social and political theory. In recent times, largely because of its growth
and importance in a wide variety of disciplines and fields of the human
and social sciences, there has been a spate of books and articles that
provide an overview of the poststructuralist tradition (e.g., Belsey, 2002;
Williams, 2005). There are also surveys of various poststructuralist
thinkers or particular traditions of thinking, such as poststructuralist
discourse theory or post-Marxism (e.g., Simons, 2004; 2010a; 2010b;
Smith, 1998). These developments are consonant with what some crit-
ics have argued was a reification of ‘Theory’ in the 1970s and 1980s,
in which researchers and scholars in a variety of academic disciplines
and fields, mostly in the Anglo-American context, subscribed to broad
‘general-theoretical categories’, which were based on certain under-
standings of semiotics and textuality, or which were borrowed from
Derrida’s ‘method’ of deconstruction and Foucault’s theory of discourse
(Osborne, 2007, p. 20). Partly to avoid endorsing this idea of a free-
standing domain of ‘Theory’, which is progressively unmoored from any
philosophical or disciplinary basis, and partly because (to my knowl-
edge) there is no systematic account of poststructuralism that focusses
6 Poststructuralism and After

primarily on the domains of social and political theory, I focus instead

on the need to apply the ideas associated with the poststructuralist tra-
dition to particular questions and problems that arise in social theory.
For the most part, therefore, this means that I have chosen to exclude
in-depth discussions of literary, cultural, and economic theory, as well as
developments in history, development studies, psychoanalysis, linguis-
tics, and post-colonial theory, and so on, even though poststructuralism
has been extended to these areas.
Yet these two tactics still beg questions about who should count as
a poststructuralist, and thus what arguments and theories should be
included. As I suggest in the book, this is a tricky question. Restricting
the field to those who explicitly call themselves a poststructuralist would
be too limiting, and sometimes misleading. Besides, it is my contention
that it is not always the case that individual theorists are necessarily the
best arbiters of their own theoretical orientation. On the other hand, to
ascribe the label ‘poststructuralist’ to a theorist is also difficult, as those
who are so defined may resist the act of naming and position themselves
outside this tradition of thought altogether. And a final problem with
this tactic is that those who might once have identified themselves as a
poststructuralist – or who never explicitly used the term, but were once
regarded as one – may alter their self-characterization at a later point.
Put briefly, the argument that I develop rejects the view that
poststructuralism constitutes a specific paradigm in the social sci-
ences, even though its products may function as exemplars, neither
is poststructuralism a more narrow ‘idiom of analysis’, even though
many poststructuralists do employ a distinctive vocabulary of theoreti-
cal terms (Farr, 1987; Weale, 1992). Poststructuralists are more diffusely
distributed than these rather restricted notions allow. Equally, I do not
use the category of poststructuralism simply to refer to a specific group
of theorists, who either identify themselves as poststructuralists, or who
are generally labelled ‘poststructuralists’. Nor finally is poststructuralism
a purely chronological division that designates a movement of thought
that comes after structuralism. Drawing instead upon Ian Hacking and
others, my response to these dilemmas – and thus my third way of
delimiting poststructuralism – is to argue that this tradition constitutes a
particular style of theorizing, and a specific way of doing social and politi-
cal theory, which is informed by a distinctive ethos. This style and ethos
is rooted in a particular set of ontological presuppositions (e.g., Hacking,
1985).
I shall thus use the name ‘poststructuralism’ to denote a particular way
of approaching questions pertaining to the relationship between social
 Introduction 7

structure, human subjectivity, and power. This approach will have sig-
nificant implications for constructing and approaching the problems of
immanence and transcendence, space and time, formation and disso-
lution of political identities, ideology, social and cultural institutions,
governance, representation, and so forth. More precisely, in address-
ing these issues I shall elaborate a distinctive version of poststructuralist
theory, which endeavours to synthesize (1) Heidegger’s existentialist cri-
tique of transcendental phenomenology, (2) Derrida’s and Foucault’s
‘deconstructive genealogies’ of closures in metaphysical texts and spe-
cific relations of domination throughout the social fabric, (3) Lacan’s
and Žižek’s radical decentring of human subjectivity, and (4) Laclau and
Mouffe’s post-Marxist theory of hegemony. Of course, both its style and
ethos, together with their attendant ontological presuppositions, must
be clarified and rendered explicit. This forms one of the key tasks of
Poststructuralism and After.
Finally, as its title suggests, this book is not just a survey of existing
debates and contributions in poststructuralism, nor is it a retrospective
summary of various currents in the field. Rather, my goal is to present
poststructuralist theorizing as a living and growing tradition of thinking,
which focusses on key theoretical and practical problems in the present.
As I make clear, the use of the term ‘after’ in the title of the book sig-
nifies that one of my aims is to discern new trajectories and tendencies
in the field, whilst also seeking to add a few new twists to the logics,
concepts, methods, and strategies that have already been developed.
In general, therefore, the book follows a threefold analytical strategy.
I begin by delimiting a particular problem in social and political theory,
whilst providing a brief exploration of various efforts to resolve it. I then
endeavour to evaluate the various poststructuralist responses to these
problematizations, before finally seeking to develop further possibilities
of thinking about this problem within this tradition.

Substantive content

These four tactics still raise questions about the substantive content of
poststructuralism. How can it be characterized? As the name suggests,
post-structuralism implies a certain kind of relationship to structuralism,
though this begs immediate questions about the nature of the con-
nection. What is meant by structuralism itself? And what kind of rela-
tionship exists between structuralism and poststructuralism? A cursory
survey of recent social and political theory reveals a range of perspec-
tives that purport to embrace a structuralist orientation. But to obtain
8 Poststructuralism and After

a more precise definition of structuralism I shall endeavour to steer a

course between a wider and a more restricted version of this approach.
Put more fully, I want to argue that structuralism ought not to be
viewed as synonymous with all sociological theories that stress the role
of social structures in explaining processes. For example, Theda Skocpol
develops a ‘structuralist perspective’ in her classical text States and Social
Revolutions to explain the causes and outcomes of social revolutions
in the modern world (Skocpol, 1979). Her comparative analysis of the
French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions is based on the idea that any
worthwhile explanation of events such as social revolutions must begin
by problematizing ‘the emergence . . . of a revolutionary situation within
an old regime’, after which it must

be able to identify the objectively conditioned and complex enmesh-

ing of the various actions of the diversely situated social groups – an
intermeshing that shapes the revolutionary process and gives rise to
the new regime. One can begin to make sense of such complexity
only by focussing simultaneously upon the institutionally deter-
mined situations and relations of groups within society and upon
the interrelations of societies within world-historically developing
international structures.
(Skocpol, 1979, p. 18)

In sum, the adoption of this ‘impersonal and non-subjective viewpoint’,

which focusses principally on the ‘patterns of relationships among
groups and societies’, is to work from within a ‘structuralist perspective
on sociohistorical reality’ (Skocpol, 1979, p. 18).
Another wider, though more developed, structuralist perspective is
evident in the theory of structuration, which has been elaborated
by social theorists such as Anthony Giddens and those who have
endeavoured to develop his work (e.g., Giddens, 1984; Stones, 2005).
In developing this approach, Giddens famously speaks of the duality of
structure, which for him captures ‘the essential recursiveness of social
life, as constituted by social practices’. In this view, ‘structure is both
medium and outcome of the reproduction of practices. Structure enters
simultaneously into the constitution of the agent and social practices
and “exists” in the generating moments of this constitution’ (Giddens,
1979, p. 5). Of course, Giddens’s basic insight has been much developed
in his various writings, whilst spawning a series of theoretical debates
about the character of social structures and the relationship between
structures and agents (Stones, 2005).
 Introduction 9

In the approach adopted here, however, the fact that a particular

theoretical approach uses the concept of social structure to describe
and explain social phenomena does not mean that it counts as an
instance of structuralist thinking. I want instead to begin by restrict-
ing structuralism to that tradition of theory in the human and social
sciences that draws upon Saussure’s linguistic model to analyse and
interpret social phenomena.1 This tradition includes theorists such as
Louis Hjelmslev, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roman Jakobson, Roland Barthes,
and even Louis Althusser and Nicos Poulantzas, who explicitly use or
implicitly refer to Saussure’s model of language in their efforts to explain
different practices and social systems. As I shall argue in this book,
each of these theorists shares to some degree Saussure’s privileging of
form over substance, in which attention is focussed on the underly-
ing rules and social patterns that position and govern the individual
signs of a system (rather than the particular properties and characteris-
tics of individual elements), as well as his commitment to a relational
(rather than an essentialist or realist) ontology, in which the identity
of a linguistic element is not determined by its reference to an exter-
nal object but depends on the differences and oppositions that pertain
between the other components of a system. Structuralists have tended
to generalize these assumptions about language to all social and cultural
systems. But they also accept a certain decentring of the human sub-
ject in the description, explanation, and evaluation of social processes.
Seen from this perspective, the social world and our knowledge of it are
not constituted by (individual) human subjects, for ‘their situation, their
perceptive capacity and their practical possibilities’ presuppose processes
and conditions that ‘dominate and even overwhelm them’ (Foucault,
1970, p. xiv).
In this approach, then, structuralism is not reducible either to a partic-
ular method or an epistemological doctrine; it is based on a distinctive
set of ontological assumptions about the (social) world and our place
in it. But there is a vital proviso to such philosophical assumptions,
because I shall also argue that the notions of structure and language
are broadly understood to encompass all theoretical projects that do not
seek to ground social relations and processes on a necessary and indu-
bitable foundation. Following Derrida, notions like ‘structure’ and ‘sign’
are best viewed as ‘impossible substitutes’ for a foundation of knowledge
or a ground of being or reality – what Derrida calls the ‘metaphysics of
presence’, or the positing of a ‘transcendental signified’ – that is ulti-
mately lacking and can never be attained (Derrida, 1976; 1978). This
means that even those who do not explicitly declare themselves to
10 Poststructuralism and After

be poststructuralists can be classified under this category, for the cri-

terion of inclusion turns on a systematic critique of essentialism, fixity,
and the unquestioned centrality of the human subject as the ultimate
source of meaning and truth. In short, in this view, the signifier ‘post’ in
poststructuralist theory signifies a refusal either to completely reject or
totally endorse structuralism; instead, it signifies a ‘both/and’ strategy
whereby the resources of the structuralist paradigm are liberated from
the essentialist strictures of its metaphysical impulses.
Building on the work of Laclau and Mouffe, this implies that all
social practices are in this perspective articulatory in that they involve
the linking together and modification of heterogeneous elements in
the production and reproduction of social life. The outcomes of such
practices are social formations, in which the linkages between the artic-
ulated moments of such systems are relational and differential (Laclau
and Mouffe, 1985, pp. 105–14). What is more, as a vital ontological con-
dition, the components that are connected together in this perspective
are not fixed or closed essences, which only fit preordained systems and
orders. On the contrary, both as a practice and as an incomplete system
of related moments, this model of social relations presupposes a world
of radically contingent elements – linguistic and non-linguistic, social
and natural – whose meanings and properties cannot be exhaustively
captured by any form, and which can be combined and arranged in
multiple ways.
The surplus surrounding such elements and objects means that each
social formation in this approach is predicated on the exclusion of
certain elements through the institution of political frontiers, which
divide the social field into ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, and thus determine
the limits of a concrete social order. Social formations are thus finite,
uneven, and incomplete. This distinctive theoretical synthesis is based
on the elaboration of a social ontology in which the subject is thrown
into incomplete structures of social relations, which are marked by an
irreducible negativity that can never be fully displaced or transcended
(Laclau, 1990). This perspective is consistent with a minimal realism
that acknowledges the existence of the objects and processes that we
think about, though our practices of reflection are never external to
the lifeworlds into which we are thrown. Indeed, it is only within such
symbolic orders that we encounter such objects.
Put more positively, this approach affirms a philosophy of radical
materialism, in which our conceptual and discursive forms can never
exhaust the materiality of objects. Objects are thus constructed in differ-
ent ways in different contexts, though no conceptual form ever captures
their essence once and for all (Laclau and Mouffe, 1987). Forms are
 Introduction 11

exposed to a formlessness or flux – a ‘constitutive outside’ – that counts

as one of their essential possibilities (Staten, 1984). The capacities of
objects and human agents are similarly marked by potentialities that
are never fixed and exhausted. Expressed telegraphically, radical materi-
alism is composed of three basic ontological commitments. In the first
place, it subscribes to a philosophy of radical immanence in which there
is nothing beyond or higher than ‘a swarm of differences, a pluralism
of free, wild or untamed difference’ which subsists within and below
existence (Deleuze, 1994, p. 50). Immanence thus stands opposed to the
positing of a pure exteriority (such as ‘God’ or ‘the Good’), which stands
outside or above ‘the anarchy of beings within Being’; this perspective
always draws upon and resonates with Derrida’s deconstruction of any
‘transcendental signified’ – God, cause, form, or presence – where the
latter purports to bring fixity or closure to the movement of difference
(Smith, 2003, p. 174). Human beings always find themselves inside what
Connolly has called a ‘world of becoming’, though it is important to
note that in my view this does not preclude moments of transcendence
during which human agents can ‘go beyond’ the particular discourses
that confer identity and practical possibility by projecting new projects
and discourses (Connolly, 2010; Howarth, 2010b, pp. 25–9). A second
ontological commitment from this perspective asserts the centrality of
social practices – or ‘practical-critical activity’ as Marx puts it – which
both inform the way we interpret and explain the world, whilst struc-
turing our encounters with other human and non-human agents (Marx,
1997c, p. 171). Radical materialism thus involves the primacy of articu-
latory practices as the means of linking together contingent elements
in the production of fragile human and social forms, which emerge
and dissolve in an uneven fashion. It follows finally, therefore, that this
ontological stance acknowledges the precariousness and instability of all
social and natural objects, which are always vulnerable to their encoun-
ters with other agencies and forces – both human and non-human –
which can change their identity and being.
This may sound like another version of social constructivism. But in
my view it would be mistaken to characterize poststructuralist theory
in purely constructivist terms, if by the latter we mean that ‘what we
accept as (objective) reality is nothing but a social construction with
limited duration. Reality is thus wholly constructed at the level of mean-
ing and linguistic structures’ (Stavrakakis, 1999, p. 54). Whilst much
of the social world is produced through the interaction of competing
social constructions, and a good deal of the natural world is also so
affected, these constructions themselves are composed of differential
12 Poststructuralism and After

articulations of human and non-human objects and processes. What

is more, these competing constructions are never without remainder, as
no form can completely exhaust the materiality of an object; existence
can never be reduced to conceptual essence. Radical materialism is not
just an epistemological and methodological orientation, which accepts
the existence of multiple perspectives about reality; it is an ontological
doctrine that foregrounds the contingency and contestability of social
and natural reality.
These articles of faith imply that the meanings, objects, imports, and
affects of the things that subjects experience and engage with in the
world are varied and often contested. But such presuppositions do not
obviate our contingent encounters with their brute facticity, nor do
they circumvent the precariousness and historicity of things. Heidegger
and Foucault have at varying times expressed this gap in terms of an
ontological difference between Being and beings, so that the meaning
of beings presupposes an order or regime that remains largely invisi-
ble and unthought (Heidegger, 1962; Foucault, 1981). Lacan, Žižek, and
others in the psychoanalytic tradition capture this with talk about a reg-
ister of ‘the Real’, which can never be fully represented in any symbolic
order. In this model, the complex and virtual series of rules and back-
ground presuppositions, which ground our everyday speech and action
in society, are always marked by the ‘presence’ of an experience or event,
which cannot be represented by the images of the Imaginary register or
the signifiers that compose the symbolic order. The Real thus signifies
an ontological fissure in social relations that can never be eradicated
or filled (Lacan, 1978, p. 53; 2006; Žižek, 1989). In a not too dissimi-
lar fashion, Derrida has spoken perspicuously of the ‘artifactuality’ of
the social world, in which the virtual and the actual are inextricably
intertwined – especially evident, for example, in the growing signifi-
cance of the media – and he stresses the irreducible openness of events
that cannot be completely represented and symbolized within existing
discursive frames (Derrida, 2002).
Viewed in this light, then, poststructuralism does not constitute an
independent or free-standing approach to social and political theory.
Singular theoretical and explanatory discourses must instead be con-
structed in particular social and historical contexts so as to critically
explain problematized objects of research. But what is common to these
different endeavours is a commitment to the structural incompletion
of all identities, objects, and systems, and to a reworked concept of
human subjectivity and agency, which breaks decisively with humanist
modes of thinking. Allied to these assumptions is a commensurate ethos
 Introduction 13

of investigation that acknowledges the contingency and historicity of

social relations. Poststructuralism thus partakes in the general move-
ment of various theoretical currents that form part of the famous
linguistic turn in philosophy; in the case of the structuralist and
poststructuralist traditions, this movement turns on the weakening and
contextualization of the sign, the signifier, and the system.

Three generations of poststructuralism

My foregoing characterization suggests that poststructuralism is a

homogenous tradition without differences and contestation. But this is
a mistaken picture, for while poststructuralists are unified in their oppo-
sition to essentialism, scientism, and certain forms of naturalism, their
approach is best conceived as a loose ‘style of theorizing’ comprising dif-
ferent tendencies and inflections that have infiltrated and transfigured
adjacent approaches and perspectives. For one thing, especially from the
perspective of social and political theory, we can roughly identify three
generations of poststructuralist theory. This division is partly chrono-
logical, as it indicates the emergence and evolution of the tradition. But
it is also theoretical because it indicates different conceptual inflections
and problematizations of poststructuralism, as its ideas are reiterated in
various contexts.
The first generation consists of those thinkers who in the 1960s and
1970s, mainly in France, began to question the basic assumptions of
structuralist and formalist thinking, as they were developed by Saussure,
Hjelmslev, Jakobsen, Lévi-Strauss, and Althusser. If one were to locate a
watershed year, it would probably be the events of May 1968 in Paris,
when students and workers brought down the De Gaulle government
in France (Boggs, 1986; Caute, 1988). In many senses, the events mark
the ‘ignoble origins’ of the new movement, which Deleuze described
as ‘a becoming breaking through into history’ (Deleuze, 1995, p. 153).
In fact, the student revolts in the streets of Paris form the epicentre
of a wider dislocation in French intellectual activity that began ear-
lier with the publication of Jacques Lacan’s Écrits and Michel Foucault’s
Order of Things in 1966. The next year brought two seminal books from
Jacques Derrida – Writing and Difference and Of Grammatology – followed
by the publication of Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition in 1968
and Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge the year after. Julia Kristeva’s
Semiotike also appeared in 1969, whilst Roland Barthes’s S/Z and Deleuze
and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus were published in the early 1970s. A steady
stream of texts and interventions by these thinkers followed in the
14 Poststructuralism and After

1970s and 1980s, which ended only with Derrida’s death in 2004. This
remarkable conjuncture of texts and events resulted in a sustained cri-
tique of existentialism, phenomenology, and Marxism, and it brought a
radical reworking of themes associated with structuralism.
More fully, instead of simply advancing the structuralist problematic,
such thinkers sought to articulate its remainders and repressed possibil-
ities. Thus, in the classical texts of thinkers such as Barthes, Deleuze,
Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva, and Lacan, the concept of structure – now
conceived as an instance of what Heidegger called the ‘metaphysics
of presence’ – was deconstructed and criticized in the name of more
‘originary’, yet less grounded or essentialist, notions such as différance,
difference, negativity, the ‘Real’, or otherness. But though these commit-
ments provided some form of unity amongst these thinkers, there were
important variations and tensions, which were to become more visible
in the second and third generations of poststructuralists. Such tensions
were partly the product of the different research objects and theoreti-
cal influences of the founding figures: Lacan was concerned to rethink
Freud’s inheritance by employing structural linguistics, and his work
emphasized questions of subjectivity and truth; Foucault was interested
in what he termed ‘the history of the systems of thought’, in which he
drew heavily on Nietzsche and Heidegger to elaborate different methods
of discourse analysis; Derrida sought nothing less than to deconstruct
the entire tradition of Western metaphysics, though he was initially con-
cerned to connect developments in Husserl’s phenomenology with his
interpretation of structuralism; and Deleuze’s writings endeavoured to
elaborate a ‘philosophy of difference’ that could rethink the relations
between desire, power, and production in contemporary societies by
drawing on Spinoza, Bergson, and Nietzsche.
These different objects and influences have spawned various theo-
retical and practical divergences and convergences. On the one hand,
Deleuze and Foucault developed philosophies of radical immanence,
which they sometimes contrasted with philosophies of transcendence,
whereas Derrida’s reliance on Heidegger and his later associations with
Levinas resulted in a commitment to a certain form of transcendence.
Lacanian psychoanalysis emphasizes the role of human subjectivity,
whereas Derrida and the early Foucault tended to stress the play of
contingent signifying structures, thus affirming a radical decentring of
the subject. On the other hand, Deleuze and Foucault came to sym-
pathize with various radical movements and groups in the post-1968
period, whilst Derrida also aligned himself with various leftwing causes;
Lacan remained somewhat above the fray, even sceptical about radical
 Introduction 15

politics, though his successors have espoused clear (usually Leftist) polit-
ical orientations (e.g., Copjec, 1994a; 2003; Roudinesco, 1990; 2008;
Stavrakakis, 2007).
It is certainly the case that these founding figures, especially in
their later writings, were intensely interested in pressing social issues
and saw their work as contributions to social and political theory.
Foucault’s innovative concepts of power, governmentality, subjectivity,
and ethics, as well as his prescient accounts of neoliberalism, sexu-
ality, and biopower, were matched by Deleuze and Guattari’s notions
of micro-politics, desire, war-machines, assemblages, and territorializa-
tion, as well as their efforts to provide ways of analysing fascism, states,
and different forms of capitalism. Such concepts and analyses are tes-
timony to the original and fecund character of the first generation of
poststructuralists. But it has been difficult for mainstream social sci-
entists and political philosophers to read their books and articles as
political theory or social science, so that for many their work remains
an enigma (Patton, 2000, p. 1). It was thus left to what might be termed
a second generation of poststructuralists, many of them working within
the Anglo-American context, to extend the founding manoeuvres of
poststructuralism into the more empirically orientated social sciences,
as well as the more normatively and critically orientated realm of social
and political inquiry.2 This younger generation of theorists, whose work
began to be published and disseminated from the late 1970s and early
1980s onwards, have used the conceptual resources and critical ethos
of the original ‘founders of discursivity’ to rethink the basic concepts
and problems in cultural theory. If one were to locate a paradigm text of
this generation, it would probably be the publication of Ernesto Laclau
and Chantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy in 1985. Their
intervention brought the ideas of poststructuralists such as Derrida,
Foucault, and Lacan into dialogue with Western Marxists like Gramsci,
Althusser, and Poulantzas and provoked wide-ranging theoretical debate
in the social and human sciences (e.g., Geras, 1987; 1988; Mouzelis,
1988; 1990). Other candidates include Edward Said’s Orientalism (1995);
Timothy Mitchell’s Colonising Egypt (1991), Slavoj Žižek’s The Sublime
Object of Ideology (1989), Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990), William
Connolly’s Identity/Difference (1991), or James Tully’s Strange Multiplicity
(1995).
What I have dubbed the second generation of poststructuralism has
thus engaged in the task of deconstructing and reworking key concepts
in the social sciences like power, class, identity, ideology, representa-
tion, subjectivity, affect, and hegemony, as well as revisiting the basic
problems of social theory, such as the relationship between structure
16 Poststructuralism and After

and agency; the connections between subjectivity, identity, and identi-

fication; discussions about feminism and masculinity; or the changing
configurations of space, time, territoriality, and the nation-state in our
globalizing world. In so doing, they have also sought to rejuvenate our
moral perspectives and ethical sensibilities with forays into normative
and critical theory, especially in relation to the concepts and practices
of democracy, freedom, citizenship, and human rights.
Finally, a third generation of researchers have further extended
poststructuralist thinking in the realm of social and political theory by
developing its basic conceptual infrastructure, whilst applying its con-
cepts and logics to empirical cases and a range of cultural phenomena.
In particular, they have begun to reflect more closely on the theoreti-
cal status of the basic grammar of concepts in poststructuralism, whilst
concentrating more closely on developing the epistemological, method-
ological, and critical dimensions of poststructuralist theorizing.3 They
have thus widened the scope of poststructuralism to embrace not only
questions about identity and subjectivity but also more mainstream
issues like globalization, governance, governmentality, political econ-
omy, policymaking, political ideologies, and so on. Importantly, in so
doing these theorists have also sought to initiate and engage in conver-
sations with adjacent research traditions and projects. Poststructuralism
and After is firmly placed within these efforts to develop poststructuralist
theory into a living tradition of social and political research.

Scope and impact of poststructuralism

The impact of these three generations of thinkers in the human

and social sciences has been immense. In fact, the influence of
poststructuralist theory is now so pervasive that virtually every field
of the human or social sciences has been significantly affected by its
themes and tropes. A cursory glance at current debates in academic
disciplines and sub-disciplines as diverse as sociology, political science,
international relations, media and cultural studies, history, geogra-
phy, organizational studies, anthropology, social psychology, linguistics,
criminology, political economy, and literary criticism shows a prolif-
eration of studies that work within a broadly defined poststructuralist
framework. For example, poststructuralist motifs have been prominent
in the writing of history and the emergence of postcolonial and subal-
tern studies, where the works of theorists like Edward Said, Stuart Hall,
Gayatri Spivak, Walter Mignolo, Timothy Mitchell, Gareth Stedman
 Introduction 17

Jones, James Tully, Robert Young, Hayden White, and Homi Bhabha
have dramatically shaped and reshaped these terrains of study.
But just as the question of time and temporality has been rethought
from a poststructuralist perspective so too have questions of space,
place, and territoriality. Human and cultural geographers such as Doreen
Massey, Ed Soja, Nigel Thrift, and Clive Barnett have drawn on theorists
like Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Laclau, and Mouffe to rethink
spatial relations and practices. Poststructuralists have also intervened
in the fields of political economy and development studies to pro-
pose novel ways of critically rethinking contemporary forms of (global)
capitalism, whilst proposing alternative forms of economic organiza-
tion (Ferguson, 1994; 2006). Poststructuralism has thus informed the
development of French regulation theory and radical political econ-
omy, and it has been connected with the development of ‘commu-
nity economies’ (e.g., Connolly, 2008a, pp. 108–13; Gibson-Graham,
1996; 2006; Torfing, 1998). Indeed, in a world of increasing inter-
national financialization and potentially catastrophic climate change,
poststructuralists have sought to furnish new concepts and logics with
which to critically explain the resultant crises, the new patterns of social
unevenness, and the emergent forms of resistance (de Goede, 2005;
2006; Newell and Paterson, 2010). It has also been concerned with
analysing and intervening in the field of environmental studies (e.g.,
Hajer, 1995; Paterson, 2007).
It is clear that questions of space, time, territoriality, and interna-
tional political economy have acquired greater salience in the context
of globalization. But in equal measure the role of the media and pro-
liferating forms of cultural representation have also assumed greater
weight right across the contemporary world. The rise of the ‘media
age’ and the ‘information society’ has in turn resulted in a plethora
of new approaches and discourses. Here again many social theorists
and media analysts have drawn on poststructuralist theories to explore
and analyse the identities of media professionals, the role of alternative
media and the various genres of media representation (e.g., Carpentier,
2007; 2011; Dahlberg and Phelan, 2011; Poster, 1989; 1990; 1995).
Other poststructuralists have explored the role of television on our
understanding of identities and subjectivity (Chambers, 2009). They
have also explored the complex intersections between new forms of
media, the construction of public spaces, and the various logics of rep-
resentation that have emerged in late modern societies (e.g., Barnett,
2003).
18 Poststructuralism and After

The proliferation of new forms of cultural production has also brought

a strong poststructuralist interest. Going back to Barthes, Kristeva, and
Derrida, structuralism and poststructuralism have played a decisive role
in the analysis of literature, drama, and film, whilst also informing var-
ious forms of creative writing (e.g., Belsey, 2005). At the same time,
traditional concerns with different forms of textual analysis have been
supplemented with concepts taken from psychoanalysis (e.g., Rose,
1996). Poststructuralist theory has also been evident in the rework-
ing of disciplines like psychology, management, and business studies
(Burman, 1994; Parker, 1992; 2004; 2008). For example, advocates of
discursive and rhetorical psychology have introduced poststructuralist
forms of discourse analysis to construct different objects of study, whilst
critical management studies has transformed the study of business and
organization (e.g., Alvesson, 2002; Alvesson et al., 1999; Alvesson and
Willmott, 1992; 2003; Andersen, 2008; 2009; Böhm, 2005).
But the second- and third-generation poststructrualists have not only
extended the scope of its concerns and applications. They have also
introduced a range of new methods and techniques of analysis in the
social sciences. Various forms of discourse theory and analysis feature
alongside the use of rhetorical and narrative analysis (see Finlayson,
2004; 2007; Gottweis, 2006). Others have sought to supplement the
attention that has been given to textual and written signifiers by
focussing on the importance of visual rhetoric (Mitchell, 1986; 2005;
Rose, 2007). Various interpretivists and discourse theorists have drawn
upon poststructuralist themes to reshape various qualitative methods
and techniques in the social sciences (Rabinow and Sullivan, 1979). Oth-
ers have endeavoured to connect poststructuralist discourse theory with
quantitative methods like q-methodology (see Glynos et al., 2009).

Situating Poststructuralism and After

Interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are thus important principles

of much poststructuralist thinking. The latter’s commitment to a rela-
tional and differential ontology means that social phenomena are best
viewed as heterogeneous combinations of dispersed elements and not
discrete entities with an essence. This assumption can, moreover, be
applied to various fields and disciplines. I shall, nonetheless, confine
myself in this book to developments within social and political theory.
Not only are these concerns directly relevant to our understanding of
poststructuralism as a tradition of social theory, but there is a good case
to be made that poststructuralism has been most developed in these
 Introduction 19

fields of thinking, especially amongst those of the second and third

generations of thinking.4
Poststructuralism and After is thus best positioned alongside those
efforts to develop poststructuralist theory into a living tradition of social
and political research. But as I have intimated it would be wrong to
impute a complete unity of purpose or outcome amongst second- and
third-generation poststructuralists. In fact, there are interesting differ-
ences in focus, method, and approach. One important tension in this
regard divides those who subscribe to a philosophy of immanence,
and those who retain some conception of transcendence in their
approach. Allied to this difference is a split in ontological persuasion
between those who commit themselves to an ontology of lack and those
who subscribe to an ontology of abundance (Tønder and Thomassen,
2005). Such differences can be traced back to the split between Deleuze
and Foucault, on the one hand, and Derrida and Lacan, on the other,
though Derrideans and Lacanians also disagree at times about their
respective theories of subjectivity.
Yet even these divisions are not so neat. Žižek, Copjec, and Jodi Dean
often find themselves at odds with Butler, Derrida, and Laclau, even
though both sets of theorists draw upon the ideas of Freud and Lacan.
Philosophers such as Badiou and Deleuze have based their ontological
postulates on mathematical principles, whilst others draw upon lin-
guistic and rhetorical resources. A further significant division that has
surfaced in more recent times is said to turn on the distinction between
culturalism and naturalism. Whilst some poststructuralists are critical
of all forms of naturalism and realism, thus affirming positions that
are more in keeping with the phenomenological traditions, others are
happy to embrace reworked versions of naturalism and realism (Bennett,
2010; Connolly, 2002a; 2010).
What is more, this plurality is not restricted to ontological nuances
or philosophical niceties. They also concern competing conceptions of
identity, power, and political subjectivity, as well as different views about
philosophy and the methods of social science. One point of discord in
this regard hinges on different conceptions of subjectivity and agency,
in which some poststructuralists have affirmed the idea of human sub-
jectivity, albeit divided and precarious, whilst others have radically
decentred the concept of subjectivity and proposed a wider conception
of agency. Another point of disagreement centres on the question of
hegemony and domination. Poststructuralists like Laclau and Mouffe
have developed a particular conception of hegemony, which emerges
out of the Marxist tradition of social and political theory. On the other
20 Poststructuralism and After

hand, there is a body of thought that has strongly questioned the

continued relevance of this concept for analysing and criticizing our
contemporary societies. Some Foucauldians and Deleuzians often equate
hegemony and domination, and thus distance themselves from more
universal projects of social change. Commentators like Jon Beasley-
Murray and Scott Lash have argued that the concept of hegemony, as
well as associated notions such as ideology critique, are no longer rele-
vant in our current situation, and that the category of ‘posthegemony’
is more appropriate (e.g., Beasley-Murray, 2003; Lash, 2007; but see also
Johnson, 2007).
A third point of dispute centres on their respective accounts of social
structures and their differing accounts of capitalism and the state. Some
poststructuralists have argued that concerns with micropolitics and
questions of ethos must be supplemented with more elaborated con-
cepts of social structures and institutions. Indeed, at the root of many of
these disputes are differing normative and ethical orientations. Critics of
the perspectives put forward by Derrida, Laclau, and Mouffe claim that
these theorists are not critical enough of capitalism, and that their advo-
cacy of radical democracy remains complicit with capitalist relations of
production (e.g., Badiou, 2005; 2006; Žižek, 2000; 2006). More radical
critics of capitalism such as Badiou and Žižek are in turn accused of naïve
and potentially authoritarian alternatives to capitalism and democracy
(e.g., Gilbert, 2007; Marchart, 2007a; 2007b; Valentine, 2007). These
issues will be discussed in the rest of the book.

Overall logic and arguments

The naming of these remainders and deficits yields a number of tasks for
future research. Indeed, the main aim of this book is to elucidate these
problems and questions in greater detail, whilst endeavouring to formu-
late a series of considered responses. The overall logic and argumentative
structure of the book mirrors this prime objective. It consists of a move-
ment from the general ontological assumptions of poststructuralism
to the more concrete problems they seek to address and critically
explain. Not only does it aim to address questions of high theory,
but it also endeavours to explore the methodological and epistemo-
logical difficulties that arise in applying theory to empirical cases and
problems. In general, then, each chapter of Poststructuralism and After
involves three elements. It begins by constructing a particular prob-
lem in contemporary social theory, evaluates the various contributions
that poststructuralists and others have made in tackling it, and then
 Introduction 21

explores ways in which the approach can be further developed and

applied.
Questions about the definition and characterization of poststructura-
lism are elaborated in the first two chapters of the book, in which
I set out its main problems and present my approach in address-
ing them. Chapter 1 fleshes out my conception and interpretation
of the poststructuralist project. Here I take my lead from Derrida’s
deconstructive reading of Saussure’s linguistic theory, coupled with a
reconstructive reading of the way in which he harnesses his decon-
structive reading of structuralism to his critical reading of Husserl’s
transcendental phenomenology. I thus show the peculiar interweaving
of structuralist and phenomenological themes in this leading exponent
of the poststructuralist project. The discussion of Husserl’s philosophy
also lays the basis for my presentation of Heidegger’s reflections on
ontology, which is developed in later chapters.
Chapter 2 introduces and evaluates a range of appraisals of
poststructuralist theory from different philosophical and theoretical per-
spectives. Poststructuralism (sometimes confused with postmodernism)
has been attacked by all the major traditions of social and political the-
ory, which often attribute mutually contradictory ideas and assumptions
to this approach. By problematizing these various problematizations,
I seek to provide an agenda of questions that require further inves-
tigation, whilst also furnishing the resources to articulate a workable
way of understanding poststructuralism. I then present three genera-
tions or ‘waves’ of poststructuralist theory and their connection to the
elaboration of social and political theory, though I heed Julia Kristeva’s
warning about not reifying these divisions too much, and thus allow-
ing a certain play and overlap amongst the generations (Kristeva, 1991,
p. 186).
Chapter 3 explores the problem of ontology in contemporary
social and political theory, with a view to elaborating a distinctively
poststructuralist social ontology. I start by considering the case for
and against the ontological turn in the social sciences, where I argue
that ontological questions are an unavoidable part of any social
inquiry and must therefore be addressed and clarified. I then turn to
Heidegger’s radicalization of Husserl’s phenomenological programme
in his effort to clarify the concept of ontology. It follows, of course,
that poststructuralism also presupposes some basic ontological assump-
tions, which must in turn be rendered explicit and evaluated. However,
as I suggest in my interpretation of Derrida’s critique of Saussure and
Husserl, it is still questionable whether or not the first generation of
22 Poststructuralism and After

poststructuralists do in fact elaborate a fully fledged social ontology,

or even desire to do so. What is more, even amongst those who do,
there is certainly no convergence of opinion on a common set of onto-
logical assumptions. On the contrary, there is a significant degree of
disagreement amongst poststructuralists, even if they share a rejection
of positivism and objectivism, as well as the broad parameters of a
postfoundational framework. I conclude the chapter by making more
explicit the three dimensions that compose a poststructuralist ontology
of social relations: the role of meanings, practices, and structures and
their interconnection in various assemblages and formations.
If the first three chapters endeavour to clarify the basic contours of a
viable poststructuralist social theory, then the next four chapters explore
the relationships between structure, agency, and power. Chapters 4 and
5 address the so-called structure versus agency debate. Much ink has
been spilled on the way in which poststructuralists deal with this issue.
But the resultant interpretations and interventions often result in cari-
catures that either suggest an all-encompassing structural determinism,
in which language or discourse completely structures the capacity of
agents to act and bring about change, or a total voluntarism in which
structures are so malleable that they provide little or no constraint
on human action. Chapter 4 deconstructs the dominant pictures that
currently underpin this debate, whilst Chapter 5 presents an alterna-
tive poststructuralist model of social relations that steers a tertium quid
between these problematic pictures of structure, agency, and human
subjectivity. Structure and agency is presented as an insurmountable fis-
sure in social and political life, though this does not preclude various
theoretical strategies and therapies that can help us to negotiate this
ontological fissure in social relations.
Chapter 6 responds positively to allegations that poststructuralists
offer no way of dealing with questions of power and domination
in social and political life. Drawing on the ontological resources of
poststructuralism and post-Marxist theories of hegemony, the chapter
charts a path between absolute determinism and total voluntarism
and then develops a way in which poststructuralists can theorize rela-
tions of hierarchy, domination, and oppression. Apart from elaborat-
ing a distinctive way of thinking about power and domination, the
chapter also takes on the claim that poststructuralist theorizing suffers
from an alleged ‘sociological deficit’, which precludes its proponents
from providing critical explanations of socio-economic structures and
forms of government or state intervention. Drawing on French regu-
lation theorists like Michel Aglietta, Alain Lipietz, and Robert Boyer,
 Introduction 23

alongside Foucauldian theories of governmentality and neo-Gramscian

state theory, the chapter integrates their various concepts and logics
within a poststructuralist perspective.
Chapter 7 tackles questions about identity, subjectivity, and their con-
nection to the role of interests and ideas in politics. Just as there are
strident critiques of poststructuralist conceptions of structure, agency,
and power, so there are others who are sceptical about the way in
which poststructuralists account for identity and subjectivity. Some crit-
ics suggest that poststructuralists overemphasize a politics of identity
as against a politics of redistribution. Others question the alleged plas-
ticity and fragmentation of poststructuralist conceptions of identity, so
that identity is equated with the proliferation of differences in late cap-
italist societies. A final group of critics maintain that poststructuralists
pay insufficient attention to the role of structural domination in the
formation and reproduction of social identities. The chapter begins
by problematizing the ‘politics of cultural recognition’, after which it
explores a number of poststructuralist responses to these problems.
I conclude by setting out an alternative poststructuralist model of
subjectivity and its relation to the politics of identity/difference.
The key claims and propositions that are advanced in the book are
reiterated in the Conclusion, where I endeavour to draw together the
various threads of my argument, whilst also setting out and restating
the consequences of my account for doing social and political analysis
in our current condition.
1
The Poststructuralist Project

The main aim of this book is to explore the way poststructuralists

endeavour to problematize and resolve some key dilemmas in mod-
ern social and political theory. But to address these challenges I need
first to flesh out my conception of the poststructuralist style of theoriz-
ing. This requires an engagement with the founder of the structuralist
problematic – Ferdinand de Saussure – and the way his ideas have
been systematized by later structuralist theorists like Roman Jakobson,
Louis Hjelmslev, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes into a fully
fledged programme for the social sciences. I shall then consider the
way poststructuralists have sought to extend the initial contours of
the structuralist project. Here I focus on Jacques Derrida’s deconstruc-
tive readings of structuralist thinkers like Saussure and Lévi-Strauss,
which he couples with his interpretation of Edmund Husserl’s transcen-
dental phenomenology, so as to develop an alternative conception of
grammatology or generalized writing. These classical poststructuralist
themes and manoeuvres prepare the ground for the more substantive
problems in social theory that are addressed in the rest of the book.

Saussure’s theory of language

Ferdinand de Saussure is best remembered for his Cours de Linguistique

Générale (Course in General Linguistics), which was published in 1916 after
his death. The book was based on notes of a lecture course delivered at
the University of Geneva from 1907 to 1911. Although Saussure him-
self left few textual traces of the course, the book was derived from
the notes gathered together by students who attended the lectures (see
Dosse, 1997, pp. 43–7; Gadet, 1989). Equally, because the course varied
considerably on the three occasions it was delivered, the book cannot be
said to represent Saussure’s considered theory of language. Yet, despite

24
 The Poststructuralist Project 25

its humble beginnings, the Course in General Linguistics is a revolutionary

work that lays claim not only to furnishing linguistics with an authen-
tic object of analysis but also in developing a distinctively structuralist
approach to the human and social sciences.
As with any revolutionary theory, Saussure’s theory of language
is complex and controversial. Yet he introduces four basic concep-
tual oppositions, which I shall use to focus my discussion of his
approach. First, he privileges the synchronic over the diachronic study
of language, in which the former consists of a system of related terms
without reference to time, while the latter explores the evolutionary
development of language. This does not mean, however, that Saussure
ignores the transformation of language, as it is only when language
is viewed as a complete system ‘frozen in time’ that linguistic change
can be accounted for at all. Without the synchronic perspective there
would be no means for charting deviations from the norm. Secondly,
Saussure asserts that ‘language is a system of signs that express ideas’ –
or langue – which consists of the linguistic rules that are presupposed if
people are to communicate meaningfully (Saussure, 1983, p. 15). Impor-
tantly, langue is rigorously contrasted with ‘speech’ or parole, where the
latter refers to individual acts of speaking. Saussure thus contrasts both
the social and individual aspects of language, and he demarcates what
he regards as the essential from the merely contingent and accidental.
In other words, each individual use of language (or ‘speech-event’) is
only possible if speakers and writers share an underlying social system
of language.
The third basic conceptual opposition arises from the basic unit of
language for Saussure: the linguistic sign. Signs unite a sound-image
(signifier) and a concept (signified). Thus the sign dog comprises a sig-
nifier that sounds like d-o-g (and appears in the written form as dog),
and the concept of a ‘dog’, which the signifier designates. A key prin-
ciple of Saussure’s theory concerns the ‘arbitrary nature of the sign’, by
which he means that there is no natural relationship between signifier
and signified. In other words, there is no necessary reason why the sign
dog is associated with the concept of a ‘dog’; it is simply a function and
convention of the language we use. This does not mean that language
simply names or denotes objects in the world, as this nominalist concep-
tion of language would assume that language consists merely of words
that refer to objects in the world. Such a view implies a fixed, though
ultimately arbitrary, connection between words as names, the concepts
they represent, and the objects they stand for in the world. For Saussure,
however, meaning and signification are entirely immanent to language
26 Poststructuralism and After

itself. Even signifieds do not pre-exist words, but depend on language

systems for their meaning. Given this, Saussure claims that the words in
languages – or rather the rules of language – articulate their own sets of
concepts and objects, rather than serving as labels for pre-given objects.
This relational and differential conception of language means that the
term ‘mother’ derives its meaning not by virtue of its reference to a
type of object, but because it is different from ‘father’, ‘grandmother’,
‘daughter’, and other related terms.
This argument is fleshed out by two central principles: first, that lan-
guage is ‘form and not substance’ and, second, that language consists
of ‘differences without positive terms’ (Saussure, 1974). The first prin-
ciple counters the idea that the sign is just an arbitrary relationship
between the signifier and the signified, which suggests that signs simply
connect signifiers and signifieds but are still discrete and independent
entities. However, this would be to concentrate solely on the way signi-
fiers literally signify a particular concept, thus disregarding the fact that
Saussure also views language as ‘a system of interdependent terms in
which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous pres-
ence of the others’ (Saussure, 1974, p. 114). To explain the paradox that
words not only stand for an idea but have also to be related to other
words in order to acquire their meaning, Saussure introduces the con-
cept of linguistic value, which he does via a number of analogies. Notably,
he compares language to a game of chess, arguing that a certain piece,
say the knight, has no significance and meaning outside the context of
the game; it is only within the game that ‘it becomes a real, concrete
element . . . endowed with value’ (Saussure, 1974, p. 110). Moreover, the
particular material characteristics of the piece, whether it be plastic or
wooden, or whether it resembles a man on a horse or not, does not mat-
ter. Its value and function is simply determined by the rules of chess,
and the formal relations it has with the other pieces in the game.
Linguistic value is similarly shaped. On the one hand, a word repre-
sents an idea (entities that are dissimilar), just as a piece of stone or paper
can be exchanged for a knight in chess. On the other hand, a word must
be contrasted to other words that stand in opposition to it (entities that
are similar), just as the value and role of the knight in chess is fixed
by the rules that govern the operation of the other pieces. This means
that the value of a word is not determined merely by the idea that it
represents but by the contrasts inherent in the system of elements that
constitute language (langue).
These reflections culminate in Saussure’s theoretical principle that
in language there are only ‘differences without positive terms’. Here,
 The Poststructuralist Project 27

language should not be seen as consisting of ideas or sounds that exist

prior to the linguistic system, ‘but only conceptual and phonic differ-
ences that have issued from the system. The idea or phonic substance
that a sign contains is of less importance than the other signs that sur-
round it’ (Saussure, 1974, p. 120). However, this stress on language as a
pure system of differences is immediately qualified, as Saussure argues
that it holds only if the signifier and signified are considered separately.
When united into the sign it is possible to speak of a positive entity
functioning within a system of values:

When we compare signs – positive terms – with each other, we can

no longer speak of difference; the expression would not be fitting, for
it applies only to the comparing of two sound-images e.g. father and
mother, or two ideas, e.g. the idea “father” and the idea “mother”;
two signs, each having a signified and signifier, are not different but
only distinct. The entire mechanism of language . . . is based on oppo-
sitions of this kind and on the phonic and conceptual differences
they imply.
(Saussure, 1974, p. 121)

In sum, Saussure’s purely formal and relational theory of language

claims that the identity of any element is a product of the differences
and oppositions established by the underlying structures of the linguistic
system.
According to Saussure, therefore, languages comprise systems of dif-
ferences and relationships, in which the differences between signi-
fiers and signifieds produce linguistic identities, and the relationships
between signs combine to form sequences of words, such as phrases
and sentences. In this regard, Saussure introduces his fourth and final
conceptual division between the associative and syntagmatic ‘orders of
values’ in language. These two orders capture the way words may
be combined into linear sequences (phrases and sentences), or the
way absent words may be substituted for those present in a linguistic
sequence. In the sentence ‘The cat sat on the mat’, each of the terms
acquires its meaning in relation to what precedes and follows it. This
is the syntagmatic ordering of language. However, others can substitute
for each of these terms. ‘Cat’ can be replaced with ‘rat’, ‘bat’, or ‘gnat’.
Similarly, ‘mat’ could be replaced with ‘carpet’, ‘table’, or ‘floor’. This is
what Saussure calls the associative ordering of language and is derived
from the way in which signs are connected with one another in the
memory (see Howarth, 2000a, pp. 18–22).
28 Poststructuralism and After

These principles of associative and syntagmatic ordering are manifest

at all levels of language, ranging from the combination and associa-
tion of different phonemes into words to the ordering of words into
sentences and discourse. Thus Saussure analyses relations within and
between different levels of language, while still employing the same
basic principles. In so doing, Saussure proposes the founding of a new
science – semiotics – ‘which studies the role of signs as part of social
life’, where language is ‘simply the most important of such systems’
(Saussure, 1974, p. 10). Over time, this new science of semiotics laid
the basis for the development of a unique structuralist methodology in
the social sciences (Saussure, 1974, p. 16).

Structuralism in the human and social sciences

Thinkers like Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, and Barthes have thus produced

structuralist accounts of a range of disparate social, cultural, and psycho-
logical phenomena. These include the study of interconnected myths
in so-called primitive societies, the delineation of unconscious desires
and fantasies that structure the identities and behaviour of human sub-
jects, and the symbolic significance of everyday activities such as all-in
wrestling and the semiotic function of fashion in modern societies. The
latter arises from Barthes’s treatment of phenomena as diverse as social
formations, political ideologies, myths, family relationships, texts, and
wrestling matches as systems of related elements (Barthes, 1967; 1973).
Saussure’s influence is also central for Lacan’s structuralist interpreta-
tion of Freud, though Lacan emphasized the ‘incessant sliding of the
signified under the signifier’, thus problematizing the fixity of meaning
and paving the way for a poststructuralist approach to social relations
(Lacan, 2006, p. 419). The latter has been taken up by theorists such as
Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Judith
Butler, and Slavoj Žižek.
But the clearest programmatic statement of the new structuralist prob-
lematic is evident in the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss. He argues that
social relations in ‘primitive’ societies could be treated as if they were
linguistic structures or symbolic orders. Consider, for instance, his the-
ory of myth. In general terms, myths are repetitive, often oblique, tales
that provide sacred or religious accounts for the origins of the natural,
supernatural, or cultural world. They comprise fantastic stories of men
intermingling with animals, fabulous events in the cosmos, and strange
distinctions between apparently homogenous materials (Coward and
Ellis, 1977, p. 18). Lévi-Strauss’s structural explanation of myth explores
 The Poststructuralist Project 29

how it is that amongst the great variety of mythical tales across the
world’s known societies they all seem to exhibit a basic similarity (Lévi-
Strauss, 1977, p. 208). He argues that myths cannot be understood
discretely or in terms of the way they are told and disseminated in the
various societies in which they occur. Instead, just as Saussure sought
an underlying system of langue beneath the contingent acts of speak-
ing, Lévi-Strauss argues that they have to be understood structurally by
considering the underlying sets of differences and oppositions existing
between their constituent elements.
The analogy with Saussure’s linguistic theory is not exact, however,
because Lévi-Strauss introduces a third level of language to account for
myths. ‘There is’, he argues,

a very good reason why myth cannot simply be treated as language if

its specific problems are to be solved; myth is language: to be known,
myth has to be told; it is a part of human speech. In order to preserve
its specificity we must be able to show that it is both the same thing
as language, and also different from it.
(Lévi-Strauss, 1977, p. 209)

According to Lévi-Strauss, parole and langue correspond to non-reversible

and reversible time respectively, in which speech is the contingent artic-
ulation of words at a given time, whereas language is the ever-present
system of language that makes speech possible. By contrast, myths con-
stitute a more complex level of language, which combine the properties
of parole and langue, and the reason for this is that while myths are told
at particular times and places, they also function in a universal fashion
by speaking to people in all societies (Lévi-Strauss, 1977, p. 210).
What, then, are the basic constituent elements of myths? At the out-
set, myths are not to be confused with speech or language, as they
belong to a more complex and higher order; their basic elements cannot
be phonemes, morphemes, graphemes, or sememes. On the contrary,
they have to be located at the ‘sentence level’, which Lévi-Strauss calls
‘gross constituent units’ or ‘mythemes’, and he endeavours to explore
the relations between these elements. In his analysis of particular myths,
these units are obtained by decomposing myths into their shortest possi-
ble sentences and identifying common mythemes, which are numbered
accordingly. This will show, as he puts it, that each unit consists of a
relation to other groups of mythemes. But so as to distinguish myths
more properly from other aspects of language (which are also rela-
tional and differential phenomena), and to account for the fact that
30 Poststructuralism and After

myths are both synchronic (timeless) and diachronic (linear) phenom-

ena, mythemes are not simple relations between elements, but relations
between ‘bundles’ of connected elements. After they have been differ-
entiated and correlated together, Lévi-Strauss can then analyse myths
at the diachronic and synchronic levels. He can observe and estab-
lish equivalent relations that occur within a story at different points
in the narrative, while also being able to characterize the bundles of
relations themselves and the relations between them (Lévi-Strauss, 1977,
pp. 211–12).
An example that Lévi-Strauss gives to illustrate his analysis and
method is the Oedipus myth as it appears in Greek mythology. The
Oedipus myth is well known and is retold in different versions. Yet in
outline, paraphrasing Thomas Bulfinch, it tells the story of Laius, King
of Thebes, who is warned by the Oracle that his throne and life will be
imperilled if his newborn son is to grow up. To avoid the prophecy, Laius
commits his son to a herdsman and orders that the infant be killed. The
herdsmen takes pity on the child, though not wishing to disobey the
king ties the child by the feet and leaves him hanging from the branch
of a tree. The child is discovered by a peasant, who takes him to his
master and mistress. The master and mistress adopt the boy and call
him Oedipus, or ‘Swollen-foot’. Years later, Laius, accompanied by an
attendant, meets a young man on a narrow road, also driving in a char-
iot. After refusing to give way to the king, the attendant kills one of
Oedipus’s horses, who in turn, in a rage, kills both the attendant and
Laius. The young man is Oedipus, and thus unwittingly he murders his
own father.
Shortly after these events, Thebes is afflicted by a monster called the
Sphinx, which has the body of a lion and the upper part of a woman.
The Sphinx lies crouched on top of a rock and accosts all travellers
by proposing a riddle which if not solved results in immediate death.
Though no one solves the riddle, Oedipus boldly takes on the chal-
lenge and after solving the riddle sees the Sphinx cast herself from
the rock and perish. In gratitude, the people of Thebes make Oedipus
their king giving him the hand of their queen, Jocasta, in marriage.
Unknowingly Oedipus has killed his father and married his mother,
thus fulfilling the tragic predictions of the Oracle. These horrors remain
latent until Thebes is afflicted with a terrible famine and pestilence.
When the Oracle is consulted again, the double crime of Oedipus is
revealed. Jocasta kills herself. Oedipus, maddened with rage, tears out
his own eyes and wanders helplessly away from Thebes abandoned by
all except his faithful daughters (Bulfinch, 1981, pp. 143–4).
 The Poststructuralist Project 31

Cadmos seeks his

sister Europa,
ravished by Zeus
Cadmos kills
the dragon
The Spartoi kill
one another
Labdacos (Laios’s
father = lame (?)
Oedipus kills his Laios (Oedipus’s father)
father, Laios = left-sided(?)
Oedipus kills
the Sphinx
Oedipus = swollen
foot (?)
Oedipus marries
his mother, Jocasta
Eteocles kills
his brother,
Polynices
Antigone buries
her brother,
Polynices, despite
prohibition

Figure 1.1 Lévi-Strauss’s Structural Analysis of the Oedipus Myth

Lévi-Strauss’s method of analysis is to disaggregate the story into its

component mythemes and then to map them onto a table, which can
reveal both its narrative structure and the related groups of mythemes.
The resultant table is reproduced in Figure 1.1. This tabular representa-
tion enables Lévi-Strauss to read the myth as a story by disregarding the
columns and simply reading the rows from left to right and from top to
bottom. It also allows him to understand the significance of the myth
by abandoning the diachronic dimension and reading ‘from left to right,
column after column, each one considered as a unit’ (Lévi-Strauss, 1977,
p. 214).
Having decomposed the myth into its component mythemes, Lévi-
Strauss is thus able to distinguish their common features so as to begin
relating them together. According to his interpretation, the first column
is characterized by ‘the overrating of blood relations’, whereas the sec-
ond is a direct inversion of the first and represents ‘the underrating of
blood relations’. The third column refers to monsters being slain, and the
common feature of the fourth is the fact that they all connote ‘difficul-
ties in walking straight and standing upright’ (Lévi-Strauss, 1977, p. 215).
What, then, of the significance of these relationships? Beginning with
32 Poststructuralism and After

the relationships between columns three and four, Lévi-Strauss argues

that the killing of monsters by mankind is inversely related to the first
column, which signifies the autochthonous (or self-generating) origins
of mankind. This is because the slaying of monsters refers to the denial
of man’s autochthony, as the monsters and dragons represent obstacles
that human beings have to overcome in order to live. Given this, the
meaning of the fourth column is understood as a persistent belief in
the autochthonous origin of man, the names capturing the particular
characteristics of mankind when they are born ‘from Earth’. In sum,
expressed in his distinctive mathematical idiom, Lévi-Strauss suggests
‘that column four is to column three as column one is to column two’
(in his preferred mathematical form: 4:3 : 1:2), and he argues that for
primitive cultures ‘the inability to connect two kinds of relationships is
overcome (or rather replaced) by the assertion that contradictory rela-
tionships are identical inasmuch as they are both self-contradictory in a
similar way’ (Lévi-Strauss, 1977, p. 216).
The overall meaning of the myth for Lévi-Strauss is summarized in the
following terms:

The myth has to do with the inability, for a culture which holds the
belief that mankind is autochthonous . . . to find a satisfactory tran-
sition between this theory and the knowledge that human beings
are actually born from the union of man and woman. Although the
problem obviously cannot be solved, the Oedipus myth provides a
kind of logical tool which relates the original problem – born from
one or born from two? – to the derivative problem: born from dif-
ferent or born from the same? By a correlation of this type, the
overrating of blood relations is to the underrating of blood rela-
tions as the attempt to escape autochthony is to the impossibility to
succeed in it. Although experience contradicts theory, social life val-
idates cosmology by its similarity of structure. Hence cosmology is
true.
(Lévi-Strauss, 1977, p. 216)

It should be stressed that Lévi-Strauss is not concerned about the dif-

ferent variants of a single myth, or questions about whether myths are
original or authentic. Rather, his objective is to analyse and interpret
myths structurally by exploring their function in different societies and
by inquiring into what they tell us more generally about human thought
and nature.
What is more, alongside his endeavours to decipher the internal struc-
tures of myths, Lévi-Strauss also examines the external relations between
 The Poststructuralist Project 33

myths. In this regard, he examines groups of related myths as they

appear in different societies and searches not only for their resemblances
but also for the oppositions or inverse relationships between them. The
overall aim is to discern the ‘rules of transformation’ that regulate the
relations between all myths. In sum, he aims to discover the underly-
ing rules that govern the endless production and modification of myths
in different societies and cultures, as they endeavour to make sense of
human existence (Lévi-Strauss, 1977, p. 230).
In fact, in his introduction to the work of Marcel Mauss (published
in 1950), Lévi-Strauss had already made clear his ambition to develop
a unified research programme for the whole social sciences based on
the rigorous assumptions and methods of structuralist analysis. Citing
with approval Mauss’s definition of social life as a ‘world of sym-
bolic relationships’, Lévi-Strauss here proposes a reworked conception
of ‘anthropology’, comprising ‘a system of interpretation accounting for
the aspects of all modes of behaviour simultaneously, physical, phys-
iological, psychical and sociological’ (Lévi-Strauss, 1987, pp. 10, 26).
In this project,

Any culture can be considered as a combination of symbolic systems

headed by language, the matrimonial rules, the economic relations,
art, science and religion. All the systems seek to express certain
aspects of physical reality and social reality, and even more, to express
the links that those two types of reality have with each other and
those that occur among the symbolic systems themselves.
(Lévi-Strauss, 1987, p. 16)

The human body is accorded a central role in this approach, though it is

understood primarily in cultural and symbolic terms (Lévi-Strauss, 1987,
pp. 8–9). Following Mauss (and pre-figuring Foucault), Lévi-Strauss thus
calls for ‘an archaeology of body habits’, which would provide ‘an inven-
tory of all the possibilities of the human body and of the methods
of apprenticeship and training employed to build up each technique’
(Lévi-Strauss, 1987, p. 8).
In seeking to connect the reality of the body and the symbolic order,
as well as the relationship between the researching subject (the anthro-
pologist) and the anthropologist’s object of research (the indigenous
subject), Lévi-Strauss develops Mauss’s emphasis on the role of the
unconscious. For example, when exploring a central dilemma in the
human or social sciences, namely that ‘the observer is of the same
nature as his object of study’, that is, ‘the observer himself is a part of
his observation’, Lévi-Strauss argues that the work of the ethnographer
34 Poststructuralism and After

is always threatened by the tragic risk of falling victim to a misun-

derstanding; that is, the subjective grasp he reaches has nothing in
common with that of the indigenous individual, beyond the bald fact
of being subjective. That difficulty would be insoluble, subjectivities
being, in hypothetical terms, incomparable and incommensurable, if
the opposition of self and other could not be surmounted on a terrain
which is also the meeting place of the objective and the subjective;
I mean the unconscious. Indeed, on the one hand, the laws of uncon-
scious activity are always outside the subjective grasp (we can reach
the conscious awareness of them, but only as an object); and yet, on
the other hand, it is those laws that determine the modes of their
intelligibility.
(Lévi-Strauss, 1987, pp. 29, 33–4)

In short, then, Lévi-Strauss brings together the role of the body and
the laws of unconscious activity, on the one hand, with Saussure’s
structuralist model of language, on the other hand, so as to lay the basis
for a scientific study of human beings, and their location in particular
social and cultural systems.
Yet it is important to note that Lévi-Strauss also insists that ‘no soci-
ety is ever wholly and completely symbolic’, as ‘it can never manage
to give all its members, to the same degree, the means whereby they
could give their services fully to the building of a symbolic structure’
(Lévi-Strauss, 1987, p. 17). This is because symbolic systems are plural
orders of signification that are not commensurable. It is also because
historical processes and events introduce heterogeneous elements into
an order, produce systemic changes, and lead to the uneven emergence
and functioning of different orders. All societies are thus vulnerable to
the impact of other societies and cannot be reduced to one dominant
cultural system (Lévi-Strauss, 1987, p. 17).
Furthermore, in an audacious sequence of remarks, Lévi-Strauss also
problematizes the stability of our discursive representations by introduc-
ing the idea of a ‘surplus of signification’ to characterize our symbolic
(and scientific) apprehensions of the world. Here he puts forward the
concept of a ‘floating signifier’ to capture the excess or surplus that is
typical of ‘the laws of symbolic thinking’ (Lévi-Strauss, 1987, pp. 61–2).
In his terms, the floating signifier represents ‘the disability of all finite
thought (but also the surety of all art, all poetry, every mythic and aes-
thetic invention), even though scientific knowledge is capable, if not
of staunching it, at least of controlling it partially’ (Lévi-Strauss, 1987,
p. 63). It is a ‘disability’ because it opens up a gap or rift between the
 The Poststructuralist Project 35

signified and the signifier and thus destabilizes the fixed connection
between our concepts (signifieds) and their signification in language via
various carriers of sense (signifiers).
This unfixed relation between signifier and signified arises for Lévi-
Strauss because of the tension between, on the one hand, our human
propensity to capture in symbolic terms the ‘totality’ of the universe
or world we inhabit, and, on the other hand, the inadequacy of our
linguistic and conceptual resources to do so. Lévi-Strauss develops this
argument by a careful reading of Marcel Mauss’s explanation of para-
doxical notions like ‘mana’ (and ‘hau’, ‘waken’, ‘orenda’, and so on)
in his efforts to develop a theory of exchange built around the con-
cept of the gift. As Mauss argues, terms like ‘mana’ appear regularly in
Polynesian societies (and other so-called ‘archaic’ social formations) and
are traditionally understood to designate a complex array of mystical
properties, including ‘the magical force in every creature’, as well as their
honour, authority and spiritual power (Mauss, 1990, p. 48). Indeed, as
Lévi-Strauss shows, Mauss’s explanation of the circulation of gifts hinges
on the presence and availability of this ‘secret power’ or ‘magical force’
to ensure the functional reproduction of these systems.
But arguing against the dominant logic of Mauss’s argument, Lévi-
Strauss does not focus on the extra-symbolic properties of these terms –
‘the order of feelings, of volitions and of beliefs’ – nor does he explain
these curious terms simply by recourse to the way in which indigenous
subjects interpret and use them, though this dimension is an important
methodological starting point (Lévi-Strauss, 1987, p. 56). The former
focus on ‘social sentiments’ would be to add an extra-symbolic explana-
tion to what is an essentially symbolic relation, whilst the latter would
be to fall foul of a ‘verbose phenomenology’ or an existentialist style of
analysis, which is at odds with the structuralist method that he favours
(e.g., Lévi-Strauss, 1987, p. 58; 1992, p. 58). He concentrates instead
on the entire system or rules of exchange relations within which these
terms operate, thereby exploring their overall function in the symbolic
orders of the subjects who employ them.
More precisely, he argues that the invention of language and sym-
bolic thought constitutes a crucial development in the ‘progress of the
human mind’, in which human beings experienced a ‘radical change’ in
their history ‘from a stage when nothing had a meaning to another stage
when everything had meaning’ (Lévi-Strauss, 1987, p. 60). He contrasts
the sharply discontinuous emergence of symbolic thinking – ‘language’,
he argues, ‘can only have arisen all at once’ – in which ‘the universe
signified the totality of what humankind can expect to know about it’,
36 Poststructuralism and After

with modern scientific thinking, which operates within the symbolic –

‘inside a totality which is closed and complementary to itself’ – but rep-
resents a slow and continuous progress towards our knowledge of reality
(Lévi-Strauss, 1987, pp. 59, 61). Scientific practices thus strive to reg-
ulate and contain our ‘supplementary ration’ of signification, though
Lévi-Strauss harbours perennial doubts that it will ever close completely
the gap between signifier and signified, and thus stem the play of our
linguistic representations.
It is this mismatch between the signifier and the signified, inaugu-
rated by our entry into the symbolic order, that provides Lévi-Strauss
with the vital context to explain these ambiguous terms, for they seek
to represent ‘an unperceived totality’ that is presupposed by the con-
dition of symbolic thinking itself (Lévi-Strauss, 1987, p. 58). Terms like
‘hau’ and ‘mana’ are thus ‘magical names’ that get connected to various
signifieds, thus enabling indigenous societies to (try and) make sense of
their social worlds:

But always and everywhere, these types of notions, somewhat like

algebraic symbols, occur to represent an indeterminate value of
signification; in itself devoid of meaning and thus susceptible of
receiving any meaning at all; their sole function is to fill the
gap between the signifier and the signified, or, more exactly, to
signal the fact that in such a circumstance, on such an occa-
sion, or in such a one of their manifestations, a relationship of
non-equivalence or inadequacy becomes established between sig-
nifier and signified, to the detriment of the prior complementary
relationship.
(Lévi-Strauss, 1987, pp. 55–6)

In this way, they play the role of symbolizing an absent totality, thereby
conferring meaning to various social practices.
In fact, according to Lévi-Strauss, this logic applies to all linguistic
communities, as the only difference between so-called primitive and
modern societies is the status we attribute to them:

The difference comes not so much from the notions themselves, such
as the human mind everywhere unconsciously works these out, as
from the fact that, in our society, these notions have a fluid spon-
taneous character, whereas elsewhere they serve as the ground of
considered, official interpretative systems; a role, that is to say, which
we ourselves reserve for science.
(Lévi-Strauss, 1987, pp. 55–6)
 The Poststructuralist Project 37

In short, then, Lévi-Strauss sees in signifiers like ‘mana’ and ‘hau’, as

well as other notions of the same type, ‘the conscious expression of a
semantic function, whose role is to enable symbolic thinking to operate
despite the contradiction inherent in it’ (Lévi-Strauss, 1987, p. 63).
This operation, he continues, ‘explains the apparently insoluble anti-
nomies attaching to the notion of “mana”, which struck ethnographers
so forcibly, and on which Mauss shed light: force and action; quality and
state; substantive, adjective and verb all at once; abstract and concrete;
omnipresent and localised’ (Lévi-Strauss, 1987, p. 63). In fact, ‘mana’
is all of these things ‘precisely because it is none of these things, but a
simple form, or to be more accurate, a symbol in its pure state, there-
fore liable to take on any symbolic content’ (Lévi-Strauss, 1987, p. 63).
Drawing upon the linguistic insights of Roman Jakobson and John Lotz,
he concludes by arguing that in

the system of symbols which makes up any cosmology, it would just

be a zero symbolic value, that is, a sign marking the necessity of a sup-
plementary symbolic content over and above that which the signified
already contains, which can be any value at all, provided it is still part
of the available reserve, and is not already, as the phonologists say, a
term of the set.
(Lévi-Strauss, 1987, p. 64)

Lévi-Strauss’s careful critique of Mauss thus explores latent possibilities

in the latter’s texts by pushing his account in the direction of an abun-
dance or play of signification that exceeds any finite system of thinking:
‘a signifier-surfeit relative to the signifieds to which it can be fitted’
(Lévi-Strauss, 1987, p. 62).
Yet he also remains committed to an ideal of total scientific
explanation at the empirical and theoretical levels. As he makes clear
in various texts, the former is realizable through the gradual accu-
mulation of more empirical data about different societies in various
contexts, which can then ‘be used to check or modify the formulation
of certain grammatical laws’ (Lévi-Strauss, 1994, pp. 7–8). At the same
time, and running in parallel with this empirical objective of complete
explanation, he places his hopes in a ‘progressive mathematization’ of
the social sciences, which ‘could enable us to discover the precise rules
by which, in any type of society, cycles of reciprocity are formed whose
automatic laws are henceforth known’ and which will ‘enable the use of
deductive reasoning’ (Lévi-Strauss, 1987, p. 43). Mathematical formal-
ization and structural linguistics can in principle reach the ‘underlying
reality’ of all human societies, as the search for complete empirical
38 Poststructuralism and After

explanation is complemented with the desire to furnish transcendental

laws and rules that are applicable to all societies.
To conclude, then, in the same way that Lévi-Strauss discerns con-
tradictions in Mauss’s endeavour to develop a scientific anthropology
based on structuralist methods, so it is possible to discern limits and
tensions in Lévi-Strauss’s own attempt to apply structural linguistics to
the social sciences in the search for a rigorous method and programme.
In fact, commentators and critics like Derrida and Barthes have explored
a range of other possibilities and lines of flight in the work of Lévi-
Strauss and Saussure, thus pushing the structuralist paradigm in what
we now term a poststructuralist direction (e.g., Barthes, 1967; 1973;
1990; Derrida, 1976; 1981a). It is to the basic contours of this project
that I shall now turn, where I shall focus upon Derrida’s deconstructive
reading of Saussure and Lévi-Strauss.

Derrida’s deconstructive reading

We have seen how Saussure advanced the idea of ‘language as a struc-

tured system’ in order that he might identify and construct an authentic
object of linguistic science (Saussure, 1983, p. 10). The idea of ‘linguis-
tic structure’ as one of the most essential ‘facts of language’ results in
his wonderfully succinct definition of language: ‘A language is a system
of signs expressing ideas’. Language is thus ‘comparable to writing, the
deaf-and-dumb alphabet, symbolic rites, forms of politeness, military
signals, and so on’ (Saussure, 1983, p. 15). But while poststructuralists
accept the importance of concepts such as structure, system, expres-
sion, and the linguistic sign as vital theoretical elements in rethinking
language and its relationship to the human and social sciences, they
also raise serious queries about the Saussurean model and its underlying
assumptions.
Consider in this regard Derrida’s critical reading of Saussure and Lévi-
Strauss in his early writings (e.g., Derrida, 1976; 1978; 1981a). His
reading of the founder of structural linguistics systematically decon-
structs each element of Saussure’s definition of language, thus putting
into question much of the propositional content of Saussure’s state-
ment. Take first the notion of a language. At an abstract level, not unlike
the postanalytical philosopher Donald Davidson, he disputes the very
idea that there is a distinctive thing in the world called language (e.g.,
Davidson, 1986, p. 446).1 Indeed, recalling Martin Heidegger’s critique
of Western metaphysics, he is generally sceptical of the transparent role
of the copula – the ‘is’ – in Saussure’s statement, which presumes that
 The Poststructuralist Project 39

we can fully capture the essential character of language (or any concept
or object for that matter) in an exhaustive proposition (e.g., Heidegger,
1962, pp. 202-3). Thus, for example, in essays like ‘Structure, Sign, and
Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’, Derrida begins by not-
ing the way in which the concept of structure in Western philosophy
and theory has been problematized by anti-metaphysical thinkers like
Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger. Whilst fully endorsing what philoso-
phers such as Richard Rorty have termed the linguistic turn – ‘the
moment when language invaded the universal problematic’ – he quickly
conceives of language in terms of what he calls ‘discourse’ or ‘writing’.
In other words, he transfigures the concept of language away from the
idea that it has a fixed ‘centre’ or ‘origin’ – a centred system – to a view
‘in which the central signified, the original or transcendental signified, is
never absolutely present outside a system of differences’ (Derrida, 1978,
p. 280). And this absence or lack of a centre ‘extends the domain and
play of signification infinitely’ (Derrida, 1978, p. 280).
Following his critique of a centred language, Derrida also questions
the various predicates that make up Saussure’s definition. He does this
by pinpointing four systematic contradictions in the Saussurean the-
ory, which I shall focus upon here. First, following his questioning of
the very idea of a language in texts like Of Grammatology and Positions,
Derrida raises doubts about the idea of a fully constituted linguistic sys-
tem. If language has no given origin or centre, because every structure
is marked by an infinite play of signification or difference, then every
symbolic system will also be marked by an excess: a signifier or differ-
ence that always exceeds any particular system. (Indeed, for Derrida, as
I shall argue later, without this excess – without the capacity of a sig-
nifier to transcend a particular context – language would not be able
to function as language at all.) Moreover, this supplement not only
adds something to the system but also shows that the system is lack-
ing something as well: it can never be closed upon itself. By contrast,
Saussure’s model runs the risk of fixing the meaning of signs in a nec-
essary fashion by arguing that the identity of the sign is a product of
the overall system of linguistic values. Though Saussure stresses that ele-
ments in a language are relational and thus dependent on one another
for their meaning, he presents the overall linguistic system as closed and
complete. This means that the underlying systematicity of the linguistic
system establishes the meaning of each term in a language (Benveniste,
1971, pp. 47–8). This results in a new form of structuralist essentialism,
in which the system of differential elements is now regarded as a fully
constituted object. In short, Saussure focusses on language as a product,
40 Poststructuralism and After

rather than a process of production, and he fails therefore to account

for the active construction and historicity of structures. At the same
time, he does not consider the possibility that structures, systems or
terms may be ambiguous or contradictory – syntactically and not just
semantically - thus exhibiting what Derrida will call the property of
‘undecidability’ (Derrida, 1981b, pp. 223–29).
Secondly, Derrida exposes the metaphysical assumptions that under-
write Saussure’s concept of the linguistic sign by highlighting systematic
ambiguities in his view. To begin with, Saussure’s conception of the
sign suggests a rigid separation between signifier and signified, and
then proposes a one-to-one correspondence between these two ele-
ments (Saussure, 1974, p. 67). In other words, instead of a purely
relational connection between the ‘material’ signifier (sound-image) and
the ‘ideal’ signified (concept), which would be in keeping with the logic
of Saussure’s theory, he splits the two aspects into two distinct entities
and then re-combines them in the sign itself. This separation implies
that there can be a signified without a signifier and vice versa. But it fol-
lows from the premises of his theory that if one tries to locate a pure
signified one only finds other signifiers. Finding out the meaning of a
word in a dictionary, for instance, can only be accomplished by being
able to recognize characters and words on a page (‘signifiers’), whilst
also understanding the meanings (‘signifieds’) of these and other words
(‘signifiers’). Similarly, the only way of distinguishing between different
signifiers is by recognizing differences that are themselves not just mate-
rial but ideal. The distinction between ‘bat’ and ‘cat’ is not just the result
of the difference between the letters ‘b’ and ‘c’; it is also determined by
what these words mean. In short, the logical conclusion of Saussure’s
own theoretical system is to blur the very distinction between signi-
fier and signified to the point at which there is no strong separation
at all.
Indeed, Saussure not only separates signifier and signified, but he
also privileges the phonic substance (speech) over the graphic substance
(writing) within the order of the signifier. For example, he argues that
‘language and writing are two distinct systems of signs; the second exists
for the sole purpose of representing the first. The linguistic object is
not both the written and spoken forms of words; the spoken forms
alone constitute the object’ (Saussure, 1974, pp. 23–4). Saussure also
alleges that writing ‘usurps’, endangers and even ‘tyrannises’ the priv-
ileged position of speech: ‘The obvious result of all this is that writing
obscures our view of the language. Writing is not a garment, but a dis-
guise’ (Saussure, 1983, p. 29). These statements are paradoxical, not least
 The Poststructuralist Project 41

because in crucial respects Saussure equates language with a system of

writing, whilst admitting that ‘the graphic form of words strikes us as
being something permanent and stable, better suited than sound to
account for the unity of language throughout time’ (Saussure, 1974,
pp. 16, 25).
Yet it is still the case that the dominant tendency in Saussure’s the-
ory is to exclude writing as a legitimate object of linguistic inquiry.
His reason for the privileging of speech is telling: it is because sound
is perceived to be closer to ideas and thought, whereas writing is one
step removed. Writing simply represents or reproduces speech. What is
more, speaking always presumes the presence of the speaker and the
hearers, whereas writing functions without the presence of a writer or a
reader. When Saussure thus discusses the relationship between thought
and language, he explicitly links thought and sound, even referring at
some points in his argument to divisions of ‘thought-sound’ (Saussure,
1974, p. 112). But these manoeuvres present us with a further ambi-
guity. On the one hand, writing just represents speech, which in turn
represents ideas or thought. In this view, writing is merely a trans-
parent medium or expression of ideas, as it is simply the means by
which ideas are transmitted in the absence of speakers and listeners.
On the other hand, writing has the capacity to distort and undermine
the transparency of speech and thought because of its permanence and
materiality, especially its ability to subsist in the absence of speakers and
listeners, which means that the ‘living presence’ of the spoken voice
is lost or forgotten. Writing becomes what Rousseau calls a ‘danger-
ous supplement’ (Derrida, 1976, pp. 141–64). In other words, graphic
representations are not just added for our convenience – to re-present
speaking – but can actively corrupt the pure presence they supplement.
The upshot of these various contradictions is that Saussure introduces
and privileges one sort of substance (speech or sound) over another
(writing or image) within the realm of the signifier itself. This provides a
further foothold for Derrida’s deconstructive reading, however, because
in privileging speech over writing Saussure’s theory is complicit with
the metaphysical priority allotted to the role of voice and reason (logos),
as against writing and representation, within Western thinking since its
inception (Derrida, 1976; 1981a). Writing is thus presented as secondary
to speech, and both elements of the signifier are regarded as inferior to
the signified. Instead, as I shall argue later, Derrida’s deconstructive read-
ing reverses these binary oppositions and develops a new conception of
writing – what he calls ‘arche-writing’– which does not privilege speech
or concepts.
42 Poststructuralism and After

Such paradoxes undermine Saussure’s claims that language is form

and not substance and consists of differences without positive terms. He
splits the signifier and signified on the grounds that one is substantial
and the other conceptual. In sum, these difficulties point to the ambigu-
ous role of the sign in Saussure’s theory and in Western thinking more
generally. The sign is there to represent ideas, which in turn designate
objects in the world. That is to say, while one aspect of Saussure’s writ-
ings challenges the dominant tradition of thinking by emphasizing the
fact that language is a self-enclosed system of differences and by attribut-
ing equal importance to the signifier and signified, he, nevertheless,
privileges concepts and the human mind.2
Thirdly, Derrida problematizes the sharp separation in Saussure’s state-
ment between the operation of the sign in particular contexts and the
meanings or ideas it ex-presses for a particular subject. Saussure’s def-
inition yields the impression that signs function as vehicles for the
expression of ideas or meanings and that the latter simply reflects the
consciousness of human subjects. But this runs against the main thrust
of Saussure’s relational and differential account of language. For one
thing, it opens the way for ideas to be located in the mind and thus
to pre-exist language, in which case it is only when ideas have to be
expressed or communicated that they will have to be represented in
language by signs. Ideas are placed outside the dynamics of linguistic
structure and remain unaffected by it. In the same breath, such a view
suggests that signifiers are only ‘material’ or ‘sensible’ carriers that are
entirely devoid of conceptuality or ideality, in which case the articula-
tion of signifier and signified, where the two are cut out simultaneously,
is nullified.
Fourthly, flowing from his critique of expressivism, Derrida questions
the way Saussure retains the idea of an autonomous subject of language
that stands outside the linguistic system. His theory revolves around the
central role he concedes to language users – human subjects – which
seem to pre-exist and are external to the linguistic system, and he
presents the human speaker as the key agent or mechanism that links
the sign to ideas and then finally to ‘reality’. His writings are thus replete
with references to the ‘human mind’ and the ‘psychological states of
speakers’. In his discussion of the methods of synchronic analysis, he
argues that ‘[s]ynchrony has only one perspective, the speakers’, and its
whole method consists of gathering evidence from speakers; to know to
what extent a thing is a reality, it is necessary and sufficient to determine
to what extent it exists in the minds of speakers’ (Saussure, 1974, p. 90).
In this way, Saussure violates his desire to privilege form over substance,
 The Poststructuralist Project 43

and he compromises the sharp boundary he wishes to draw between

langue and parole. According to Saussure, the formal and essential sys-
tem of language ought to be independent of any contingent speech acts
performed by individual language users. This provides him with his dis-
tinctive object of linguistic theory. However, the central role attributed
to the human mind and language users blurs this fundamental division,
and consequently many of the inferences Saussure wishes to draw.
Alongside these four basic criticisms, we might add a fifth that is
implied by Derrida’s reading. It is that Saussure stops short of develop-
ing an adequate conception of discourse. While he argues that discourse
comprises linguistic sequences greater than a single sentence, he does
not provide the tools for its analysis in structural terms. This is because
he classifies sentences and systems of sentence as instances of parole and
not langue, thus restricting his theory to the false opposition between
language as a total system of signs and speech as a product of the ‘indi-
vidual freedom’ of each language user (Saussure, 1974, p. 125). This
theoretical decision means that the construction of sentences and the
relations between sentences are attributed to the spontaneous creativ-
ity of individual speakers, thus falling outside the remit of a formal
structural approach. Discourse cannot therefore be analysed as a regu-
lar system of related and differential units, as Saussure banks upon an
all-powerful conception of human subjectivity. Moreover, as discourse
theory in the social sciences is primarily concerned with the exami-
nation of changing and contested systems of discourse, this makes it
difficult to employ Saussure’s theory without modifying some of its key
assumptions.
The sum total of these conceptual inconsistencies in Saussure’s theory
results in an ambiguous inheritance. His advances towards a relational
and non-essentialist theory of language, which can be analysed inde-
pendently of individual speech acts, run aground because he assumes
that both the sign and the human subject/mind can be viewed as fully
constituted entities or objects. This objectivism reinforces the static pic-
ture of signification and meaning presaged in Saussure’s privileging of
the synchronic over the diachronic dimensions of language. Language
is thus seen as a total system of differences which, albeit temporar-
ily, is fixed; the idea of language and signification as an endless and
indeterminate production of meanings is thus broached, but ultimately
foreclosed. As Derrida argues, this is largely the product of Saussure’s
investment in the tradition of Western metaphysical thinking, which
privileges the role of human reason and thought over and above the
contingencies and materialities of language use. Yet, as Derrida insists,
44 Poststructuralism and After

‘it is not a question of “going beyond” the master’s teaching but of

following and extending it’, and this involves a weakening and a recon-
struction of the concepts and logics in Saussure’s theory of language
(Derrida, 1976, p. 55).

The Derridean alternative

We thus need to say a little more about Derrida’s positive alternative

to the original Saussurean model. Put generally, Derrida follows and
diverges from his master’s teaching by inverting and re-inscribing the
binary opposition between the traditional conceptions of speech and
writing. In so doing, he develops an alternative account of arche-writing
or grammatology, which he sometimes calls discourse or textuality.
To accomplish this task, he deconstructs the theoretical resources of
Husserlian phenomenology, which he accords a ‘juridical priority’ in
philosophical discourse, and then harnesses these concepts alongside
his critique of the structuralist project inspired by Saussure, Louis
Hjelmslev, and Lévi-Strauss (Derrida, 1989, p. 151). As I have already
presented the basic concepts of structural linguistics, it is incumbent
upon me to say something in general about phenomenology, as it was
developed by its founder Edmund Husserl.
If it is not too oxymoronic, Husserl can be described as a ‘revolution-
ary reactionary’ in that he opposed the dominant strands of European
philosophical thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries – positivism, historicism, nihilism, and existentialism – in
the name of a more classical search for truth and objective knowledge.
But he also sought to ground his quest for a rational philosophy by
radicalizing the very concepts of truth and subjectivity he invoked.
In carrying out this ambitious project, he discerned a common objec-
tivism amongst positivists, who reduced philosophical reflection to the
facts of natural science, and a range of historicists and nihilists, who
reduced knowledge and truth to historical processes and will. At the
same time, he challenged movements such as existentialism for ques-
tioning objective truth and rationality in the name of subjective choices
and decisions (Husserl, 1965). In short, the problem of objectivism
denoted the ultimate reduction of thought, ideas, and discourse to pre-
constituted objects and subjects, and it was held partly responsible for
the growing crisis of Western science and society.
Much of Husserl’s thought was concerned with the ‘problem of tran-
scendence’, in which he employed the notion of transcendence to
capture the objectivity of objects, or the fact that objects exist external to
 The Poststructuralist Project 45

our consciousness of them (Staten, 1984, p. 33). These objects included

everyday objects as well as abstract theoretical truths such as geomet-
rical theorems or scientific laws. Husserl aimed in short to reconcile
the truth or certainty about objects which a human subject can attain
within its consciousness – the domain of immanence so to speak – with
their objective truth or certainty. His various answers to this problem
hinged on developing a rigorous method that he called phenomenol-
ogy. To explore Husserl’s various attempts to address this fundamental
problem, I shall begin with some general remarks about phenomenology
and then consider some of its implications.
One of the enduring slogans of the phenomenological movement is
Husserl’s call ‘to go back to the “things themselves” ’ (Husserl, 2001,
p. 88). But lest this approach be accused of a naïve realism that takes
objects as given, ready-made things, or a scientism that does away with
an animating subjective consciousness that can reflect about facts and
objectivity, Husserl characterizes phenomenology as a way of describing
objects as one experiences them. Phenomenology can thus be under-
stood as the study or description of phenomena, where a phenomenon
is anything that appears or presents itself to someone. In this way,
Husserl does not deny or question the existence of objects external to
thought but chooses instead to focus on the way in which they appear
and are experienced in our consciousness. Even so, such consciousness
is of something, and this directedness is what Husserl calls ‘intention-
ality’ (Husserl, 2001, pp. 212–4). At the same time, Husserl does not
reduce the contents of our consciousness to the mere sensations of each
individual’s experience. On the contrary, he counters this empiricist or
psychologistic understanding with the idea that the descriptions of the
objects that appear in our consciousness aim at idealities – noema or pure
forms – that can be repeated independently of any particular individual.
In technical terms, then, Husserlian phenomenology ‘is the science of
the intentional correlation of acts of consciousness with their objects’,
and it examines ‘the ways in which different kinds of objects involve
different kinds of correlation with different kinds of acts’ (Bernet, 1998,
p. 198). In the course of his philosophical reflections, Husserl proposed
a number of ways of achieving his ambition. Yet it is still possible to
discern the basic approach proposed by Husserl.
In general, the fundamental purpose of phenomenology for Husserl
is to realize the goal of philosophy, that is, to achieve knowledge of the
true (Staten, 1984, p. 33). In other words, it involves the key episte-
mological question concerning the validity of our beliefs: How can we
secure true knowledge of objects, and how do we know that we know
46 Poststructuralism and After

them? Expressed in Husserlian terms, the question concerns the way we

can move from a description of the contents of our consciousness to a
true apprehension of the objects themselves. In tackling this question,
Husserl provides various answers at different stages of his intellectual
development. However, his thinking from the Logical Investigations to
the Crisis of European Sciences is animated by the singular desire to
challenge idealism, naïve realism, and empiricism, either because they
reduce being to thought or because they conceive of thinking as an
activity that reflects or mirrors an external world. To counter these prob-
lematic orientations, he elaborates his alternative philosophical stance,
which he calls transcendental phenomenology.
But what does he mean by these abstract terms? We have seen what
Husserl means by his idea of phenomenology, but we also need to
explore the way in which he qualifies this approach as transcendental.
As the name suggests, Husserl here invokes a type of analysis in mod-
ern European philosophy that is not only or principally concerned with
facts, but rather with their conditions of possibility. Kant, for instance,
explored the conditions of possibility of our experience by stressing the
way in which our concepts of space and time, and what he called our
categories of understanding such as causality, are found in the mental
structure of each human being, thus forming the a priori dimension in
the very constitution of phenomena. For his part, Husserl traces this
transcendental way of thinking, which stresses the formative role of the
human mind, back to Descartes. As he puts it in The Crisis of European
Sciences:

I use the word ‘transcendental’ in a very broad sense for the original
motif which, through Descartes, is the source of meaning in all mod-
ern philosophies and which seeks . . . to come to itself in all of them
and to achieve the genuine and pure form of problems and system-
atic operation. It is the motif of enquiry into the ultimate source of all
cognitive formations – of the self-reflection of the knower on himself
and his cognitive life, in which all scientific structures which hold
good for him come into being in a purposeful way, are preserved as
acquisitions and have been and are freely at his disposal.
(Husserl, 1970, pp. 97–8)

In short, then, Husserl’s employment of the term is meant to capture

the central role of human subjectivity – in its transcendental form – in
constituting the meaning of objectivity and then distilling its essence.
If we are to rationally reconstruct the basic moves of tran-
scendental phenomenology, we must begin by focussing on his
 The Poststructuralist Project 47

transcendental-phenomenological reduction or epoché, which is the key

methodological device that animates his approach. For purposes of
analysis and exposition, I shall divide his approach into two central con-
ceptual manoeuvres. First, as against scientism and positivism, in which
the world in its totality is naïvely comprehended from a scientific point
of view, Husserl starts by placing human subjects firmly in the lifeworld,
from whose vantage-point there is no possibility of escape or circum-
vention. But he then asks us to bracket our ‘natural attitude’ toward the
world – the way we ordinarily experience the world of objects and prac-
tices in our everyday activities and interactions – by suspending all our
assumptions about the existence or ‘facticity’ of things, which occur in
our natural scientific and commonsensical understandings. Transcen-
dental phenomenology focusses instead on the appearances of things
for us; in other words, Husserl shifts our attention from questions about
the being or existence of things to their meaning or sense.
Yet Husserl insists, secondly, that we should also suspend what might
be termed our empirical subjectivity, so that we don’t just focus on
the way objects appear in our consciousness, with their pre-existing
layers of meaning and interpretation. This is because they are necessar-
ily informed by our theoretical assumptions about existence, causality,
subjectivity, and objectivity. He calls rather for pure acts of conscious-
ness that constitute the identities of objects by dissolving assumptions
and prejudices that prevent an apprehension of their essence. In short,
then, we have to carry out what Husserl calls a ‘double bracketing’
of both things and the conventional meanings we ascribe to those
things. His first manoeuvre is thus but a precursor to a second one that
involves a move from subjective opinion (or doxa) to objective knowl-
edge. What he thus calls the ‘eidetic reduction’ involves a shift from
the pure description of the contents of our consciousness to the distil-
lation of the essence (or eidos) of a phenomenon from the position of a
transcendental subject or ‘pure ego’ (Hammond et al., 1991, pp. 75–84).
Such strategies are made clear in the Cartesian Meditations, where
Husserl begins by arguing that ‘as radically mediating philosophers’, in
which we have bracketed the natural attitude, ‘we now have neither a
science that we accept’, since it assumes the world’s existence, ‘nor a
world that exists for us’. As he continues:

Instead of simply existing for us . . . the world is for us only something

that claims being . . . The world is for me, from now on, only a phe-
nomenon of being, instead of something that is [i.e. exists] . . . If I put
myself above this life [of the ordinary experience of the world or the
natural attitude] and refrain from doing any believing that takes ‘the’
48 Poststructuralism and After

world straightforwardly as existing – if I direct my regard exclusively

to this life itself, as consciousness of ‘the’ world – I thereby acquire
myself as a pure ego, with the pure ego, with the pure stream of my
cogitationes [cogitations].
(Husserl, 1991, pp. 18–21)

This purification of our consciousness resonates with Plato’s search for

the essential forms that only really exist in a ‘heavenly place’, so that
the concrete physical objects we experience in the world are no more
than pale and imperfect copies.
Yet Husserl does not posit such forms in a ‘heavenly place’, as Plato
does, but seeks a method and practice that can bring such forms – or
noema as he calls them – into being. The crystallization of such idealities
can be achieved via what he calls ‘imaginary eidetic variation’, in which
we perceive an object from a variety of perspectives to constitute its
true form (Staten, 1984, pp. 37–8). As he puts it in the Shorter Logical
Investigations,

I see a thing, e.g. this box, but I do not see my sensations.

I always see one and the same box, however it may be turned and
tilted . . . [E]ach turn yields a new ‘content of experience’ . . . though the
same object is perceived. The experienced content, generally speak-
ing, is not the perceived object . . . . [D]ifferent sensational contents
are given . . . but . . . we apperceive or ‘take them’ ‘in the same sense,’
and to take them in this sense is an experienced character through which
the ‘being of the object for me’ is first constituted.
(Husserl, 2001, p. 221, cited in Staten, 1984, p. 35)

The practice of constructing idealities through variation provides one

way of distilling an object’s essence. But Husserl also recognizes the
necessary role of language and signs in this practice, for he accepts
that there must be some means of representing and communicating
the results of our philosophical and scientific endeavours to others and
future generations. Yet this poses a further problem for his project, for
his transcendental phenomenology must rely upon the structures of lan-
guage, even though the latter (in keeping with the Western metaphysical
tradition in general) are always potentially dangerous to meaning and
truth.
As with his philosophy in general, Husserl’s remarks on language
and signs are immensely complex, and they cannot be considered in
detail here. Yet there is one important dimension in any philosophical
 The Poststructuralist Project 49

conception of language, which Husserl’s project exemplifies, and that is

the idea that language must be directly connected to the ideal of mean-
ing. Husserl’s account distinguishes three levels of meaning. These are
what might be termed the ‘word-sound’, which is similar to Saussure’s
signifier, and thus enables us to discern the kind of sign we are using
in any particular instance; the sense or signification of the word: what
a word (such as ‘dog’) means in a given language across various con-
texts; and what Husserl calls the ‘ideal objectivities’ – or ‘free idealities’ –
of scientific discourses such as science and mathematics, which once
constituted have an infinite existence beyond any particular usage in
specific historical contexts (Staten, 1984, pp. 21–2). But despite disaggre-
gating these three levels of meaning in language, Husserl is convinced
that the ultimate purpose of language is to transmit ideal meaning. He
thus retains a strong commitment to the idea that the particular mate-
rial signs (or tokens) that we use are united by the sense of the sign (or
types), which in turn is determined by its ideal meaning. In short, then,
the identity of the ideal or essential meaning of a sign can be painlessly
divorced from its material embodiment in particular and contingent car-
riers of meaning: the envelope of language does not interfere with the
ideal message it contains.
A crucial element in Husserl’s account is his insistence that the sign
is both repeatable – a bridge between the past and the future – and
thus essential in the transmission of knowledge. Yet for that very rea-
son it is a continual source of potential danger. This is especially true for
the written sign, as its capacity to represent and reproduce true knowl-
edge in the absence of the subject that created knowledge, which is the
very function of writing, leaves it vulnerable to a moment of ‘forget-
ting’, when we may lose the original subjective intuitions that founded
knowledge. As Derrida is quick to note, in repeating this classic motif
in Western philosophy, Husserl thus privileges speaking over writing,
though acknowledging the indispensability of the latter (Derrida, 1981a,
pp. 4–5, 30–1). One of Husserl’s solutions to this dilemma of the sedi-
mentation of knowledge, which can always provoke a crisis of meaning
and knowledge, involves an historical investigation of those moments
when scientific truths were originally constituted so that we may re-
animate our beliefs and theories. In short, he proposes that we return to,
and then re-activate, the founding moments of a science by a transcen-
dental subjectivity, thus ‘de-sedimenting’ the traditions and signs that
enable the transmission of our knowledge, so that we may re-animate
our beliefs and theories. They can thus be re-lived anew (e.g., Husserl,
1970, pp. 353–78).
50 Poststructuralism and After

Put in a nutshell, then, the phenomenological project is in many

respects the very opposite of structuralism. The structuralist project
decentres language by stressing the relational and differential character
of the sign. It also questions the constitutive role of a meaning-giving
subject by choosing to focus on the operation of various rules and log-
ics that combine meaningless elements into different relations below
the threshold of subjective meaning and interpretation. Moreover, as
I have noted, it is evident that Derrida accepts the basic thrust of
this structuralist critique of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology.
He thus problematizes Husserl’s concern with an a priori subjectivity;
his search to distil the essences of phenomena; as well as his pri-
oritization of speech over writing (Derrida, 1976; 1982). Yet at the
same time Derrida is loath to reject in toto the Husserlian emphasis
on meaning and historicity. (Indeed, he often resists the forced choice
between two powerful philosophical positions that both carry weight.)
Derrida thus accepts Husserl’s insight that one needs to reduce empir-
ical being to phenomenological sense, and he seeks to fulfil Husserl’s
demand to locate signs – and our experience of the world in general –
in time and historical context (Staten, 1984, p. 4). But this means
that he must endeavour to synthesize a deconstructed version of phe-
nomenology with his reworked interpretation of Saussure’s theory of
language.
Derrida elaborates his synthesis by employing these two theoreti-
cal resources to rethink the basic logics and conceptual infrastructures
of linguistic forms. First, he reworks Saussure’s notion of the sign by
articulating his idea of a trace-structure, which brings together the phe-
nomenological emphasis on meaning (and the passage through the
subject) with the differential and relational focus of structuralism. He
then articulates the relationship between these traces in networks of
differential structures by reworking the notion of difference in a new
conceptual infrastructure that he terms différance. Finally, he outlines
the conditions for the dynamic and temporal functioning of traces in
different contexts by explicating the logic of iterability: the simulta-
neous repetition and alteration of traces. I shall look at each of these
elements in turn, and then how they work together in Derrida’s theory
of grammatology.
True to his interweaving of the structuralist and phenomenological
problematics, Derrida’s concept of the ‘trace-structure’ brings together
the material (or sensible) and ideal (or intelligible) dimensions of the lin-
guistic sign – the signifier and signified so to speak – whilst furnishing
the conditions of possibility and impossibility for its operation. More
 The Poststructuralist Project 51

fully, he builds a universal and necessary absence into our conception of

signs, so that their form is always marked by a relation to formlessness –
their essence or ideality is always related to something secondary, mate-
rial, external, or contingent – and their presence is always connected
to the past and the future. The sign as a trace-structure makes possible
a new concept of writing, which he names gram or différance. In this
conception,

The play of differences supposes, in effect, syntheses and referrals to

another element which forbid at any moment, or in any sense, that
a simple element be present in and of itself, referring only to itself.
Whether in the order of spoken or written discourse, no element can
function as a sign without reference to another element which itself
is not present. This interweaving results in each ‘element’ – phoneme
or grapheme – being constituted on the basis of the trace within it of
the other elements of the chain or system. This interweaving, this
textile, is the text produced only in the transformation of another
text. Nothing, neither among the elements nor within the system,
is anywhere ever simply present or absent. There are only everywhere,
differences and traces of traces.
(Derrida, 1981a, p. 26. My emphasis)

In other words, just as the trace of something or someone always indi-

cates something that is not fully there – a particular footprint or a
distinctive smell that enables us to locate an absent origin – so it is
that the linguistic trace alludes to something that is not present or fully
formed.
Yet Derrida’s notion of the trace-structure is even more radical: there
can be no excavation of a fully present absence or a fully formed
thing-in-itself, because the latter is equally lacking. It is also marked by
difference and contingency. What is more, Derrida’s reworking of the
sign extends to all temporal and lived experience:

Such would be the originary trace. Without a retention in the mini-

mal unit of temporal experience, without a trace retaining the other
as other in the same, no difference would do its work and no mean-
ing would appear. It is not the question of a constituted difference
here, but rather, before all determination of the content, of the pure
movement which produces difference. The (pure) trace is différance.
(Derrida, 1976, p. 62)
52 Poststructuralism and After

When Derrida thus infamously states that ‘there is nothing outside the
text’ or that ‘the thing itself is a sign’, he is not yielding to a banal
linguistic reductionism in which everything is language (Derrida, 1976,
pp. 162, 49). Nor is he claiming that language can unproblematically
capture the essence of being. On the contrary, though everything we
experience is mediated in language qua the operation of the trace-
structure, no relation of traces can fully capture the thing or referent in
question. Traces never exhaust the objectivity of an object because they
are themselves dependent on a relational network of differences. Things
and words are co-constituted, though their co-constitution is itself never
complete.
But also in line with his relational perspective, these traces have to
be inserted into incomplete relational structures wherein they acquire
their meaning and identity. Derrida’s concept of différance thus speaks
to the way signs acquire their identities in context, though the latter
is never saturated. In other words, if traces become the new elements
of Derrida’s theory of writing, the concept of différance accounts for
the active production of language and discourse. As Derrida puts it in
Positions:

Différance is the systematic play of differences, of the traces of dif-

ferences, of the spacing by means of which elements are related
to each other. This spacing is the simultaneous active and pas-
sive . . . production of the intervals without which the ‘full’ terms
would not signify, would not function. It is also the becoming-space
of the spoken chain – which has been called temporal or linear; a
becoming-space which makes possible both writing and every corre-
spondence between speech and writing, every passage from one to
the other.
(Derrida, 1981a, p. 27)

What is meant by this concept of différance? In the first instance, it repre-

sents a complex Derridean pun, an example of his word play. In French,
the verb differer captures at least two meanings, namely, ‘to differ’ and
‘to defer’. Moreover, différance is pronounced the same as difference,
although in its written form the –‘ance’ enables the verbal noun to take
on a new significance, which approximates in English to ‘difference-
differing-deferring’ (see Culler, 1983, p. 97). Apart from providing a
practical demonstration of the importance of writing vis-à-vis speech,
Derrida is seeking to encapsulate the idea of an already existing set of
differences, and their active production through the act of differing.
 The Poststructuralist Project 53

This act of differing is also a deferring of possibilities not actualized in

a system of difference. In short, ‘différance is the name we might give
to the “active”, moving discord of different forces, and of differences
of forces’ (Derrida, 1982, p. 18). In sum, différance captures the way in
which meaning is produced both by the interplay of different traces
and by the necessary deferment of some possibilities not actualized or
signified by the play of traces.
In short, if traces become the new elements of Derrida’s theory of
writing, the concept of différance accounts for the active production
of language and discourse. Yet there is one final element in Derrida’s
picture that needs to be added and clarified: the infrastructure of iterabil-
ity, which speaks to the simultaneous logic of repetition and alteration
that is characteristic of discourse. At various points in his writings,
Derrida introduces a ‘basic communication model’ as a foil for devel-
oping his own conception (e.g., Derrida, 1981a; 1982).3 Subject A has
an idea, puts it into language, and then transmits a message B via
the medium of language to subject C. Subject C decodes the signs,
discloses its meaning, and grasps the message that was sent. In this
simple picture of language use, which underlies and structures many
conceptions of communicative action or dialogue, the figure of pres-
ence and immediacy looms large: both Subject A and Subject C are
present in the communicative context; their ideas are readily avail-
able in their consciousness and thus pre-exist language; these ideas or
thoughts are immediately given voice in a medium that can transpar-
ently convey meaning in the form of message B without distortion or
interference. Language is no more than an (outer) envelope that car-
ries a message intended by its writer – the (inner) letter – in a purely
external and instrumental fashion to a reader who can fully grasp its
meaning and content. (Writing – the written signifier – does no more
than ‘re-present’ speech, whereas speech and thought are immediately
and directly related: speech and thought are co-present so to speak.).
Derrida’s deconstructive reading of this basic communication model
is simple, though destructive in its consequence. First, he notes the way
in which speech – the living voice that is infinitesimally close to our
thoughts and ideas – is privileged over writing, which is relegated to the
role of reproducing and re-presenting speech. But the very properties of
writing that are relegated to an inferior position vis-à-vis speech – the
materiality and repeatability of the written signifier, as well as its abil-
ity to function in the radical absence of speakers and writers – are in
fact necessary and constitutive features of all communication. In fact,
they better disclose elements that enable us to see the operation of all
54 Poststructuralism and After

language use, including speaking and verbal communication. The argu-

ment runs as follows. All thinking – each idea that we ‘have’ – necessarily
presupposes signs and language. But if language is to work as a system
of signs – or ‘trace-structures’ to use Derrida’s reformulation – then the
latter must be able to function across different contexts: they must con-
tain or exhibit a ‘minimal remainder’ – they can always be ‘cited’ or
‘grafted’ into new chains of signifiers – which enables their recognition
or sameness in different contexts. (Here Derrida’s argument is similar to
Wittgenstein’s devastating critique of the idea of a ‘private language’,
that is, the idea that each of us could invent our own code for trans-
mitting and communicating ideas. Wittgenstein’s therapy in this regard
is to show that even in the case of an individual inventing his or her
own language, he or she would still have to construct and adhere to this
code, which must therefore in principle be public and repeatable, if he
or she is to understand himself or herself (Wittgenstein, 1967)).
Derrida’s argument can be illustrated by referring back to our earlier
paradigm of communication. In this picture of language-use, Subject C
can only read the letter sent by Subject A on condition the he or she can
decipher and understand the signs that have been written down. But if
signs are necessarily connected to and dependent on context – if ‘mean-
ing is use’ to use Wittgenstein’s phrase – then they are always marked
by and vulnerable to the different contexts within which they function.
What is more, they will thus be altered – no matter how minimally – by
their repetition, that is, through their (re)insertion in a new context, or
a new scene of language. In this way, the idea of iterability captures the
interlinking of identity and difference, as well as the interlacing of con-
tinuity and discontinuity. Instead of separating these notions, and then
privileging one over the other – identity over difference, stability over
instability, pure repetition over change, form over flux, and so forth –
Derrida proposes a new conceptual accounting that holds both elements
together in a contingent synthesis.

Conclusion

By focussing closely on Derrida’s deconstruction of Saussure’s

structuralist model of language, and the latter’s extension into the
human and social sciences, this chapter has distilled the basic assump-
tions, concepts, and logics of the structuralist project. More precisely,
I explored the way in which Derrida worked with and against Saussure’s
revolutionary theory of language by radicalizing the latter’s conception
of a linguistic system and by articulating a particular interpretation of
 The Poststructuralist Project 55

Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. The problematic that emerges

in the wake of this careful textual labour is resolutely anti-essentialist
and postfoundational, as it is founded on a relational, decentred, and
incomplete conception of social systems and symbolic orders. In this
model, the human subject is no longer conceded a constitutive role in
the construction of meaning or in the production and explanation of
textual systems but presupposes these structures and relations. In short,
these poststructuralist assumptions indicate a transcendental movement
that inquires into the conditions of possibility and impossibility of dis-
aggregated facts and information, so as to locate a realm of meanings
and interpretations that enables us to make sense of the various expe-
riences and data we encounter. But it also goes further to explore the
conditions of the latter, which it locates in the play of ‘incomplete struc-
tures’ and forces. Yet these philosophical considerations do not yield a
fully fledged social ontology; they have to be extended and elaborated
so as to provide the tools to analyse and critically explain a range of
‘thick’ social practices and structures. A key component of this task is
to develop a coherent and useful approach to the problem of structure
and agency in social and political theory, whilst extrapolating its impli-
cations for our understanding of power, subjectivity, identity, and the
dynamics of social change. These questions occupy the rest of this book.
2
Problematizing Poststructuralism

Poststructuralist philosophy has attracted considerable critique from

many perspectives. Rationalists, neo-conservatives, liberals, Marxists,
critical theorists of the Frankfurt School, proponents of hermeneutics,
structuration theory, and critical theory, and even some Lacanians have
raised serious objections about different aspects of its ontology and its
substantive concepts and logics. One line of criticism has focussed on
the difficulties of developing and translating its abstract concepts and
logics into a viable social and political theory. This task is awkward
because unlike other traditions in this field – for example, Marxism
or structuration theory – there is considerable disagreement about the
meaning and scope of poststructuralism. (Indeed, as I have already
noted, there are many theorists who are sceptical about the very idea of
a poststructuralist tradition of social theory.) Not unlike earlier debates
about postmodernism, one immediate issue concerns the awkward sta-
tus of the prefix ‘post’ in the name ‘poststructuralism’. Other critiques
are directed at the philosophical presuppositions of poststructuralism,
especially the alleged valourization of language and meaning in the
social sciences, as well the downplaying of ‘reality’ and ‘material con-
ditions’. A further set of questions is raised about the substantive
content of the approach, especially its ability to tackle the problems
of social structures and institutions, as well as its conceptions of sub-
jectivity, agency, power, identity, and domination. My strategy in this
chapter is to canvas a number of perspectives that have problema-
tized poststructuralist theory, evaluate the substance of their claims,
and then to elaborate my own particular understanding. Setting out
this problematization of poststructuralism will enable me to specify my
object of inquiry more clearly and then elaborate an agenda of prob-
lems for further investigation. I begin with the tricky task of defining

56
 Problematizing Poststructuralism 57

and characterizing poststructuralism. What is poststructuralism? Who

are the poststructuralists? What do they stand for?

What’s in a name? The ambiguities of poststructuralism

Like many labels in social theory, poststructuralism is highly contested,

perhaps essentially so. This contestation is perhaps more pronounced
in the case of poststructuralism because of the many connotations and
misperceptions it evokes. For one thing, there is some dispute about
whether we should call thinkers like Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, and
Lacan poststructuralists at all. Some commentators see in their works
either a neostructuralism that modifies, but more or less continues the
original ideas of structuralism, or an antistructuralism that completely
abandons any idea of structure or rational analysis in the name of
a linguistic free play that results in a pure formlessness (Merquior,
1986). I shall argue, however, that this is a false opposition, for the
notion of poststructuralism captures a particular relationship between
structuralism and its successor discourses that problematizes any sim-
ple understanding of continuity and discontinuity, whether conceived
in terms of a ‘mere addition’ to something that is already there, or as
a complete break with an existing tradition. Poststructuralism is thus
better viewed as a form of ‘weak thinking’ that discloses new permuta-
tions in the structuralist paradigm by showing its limits and blindspots
(Vattimo, 1988; 1997).
Nonetheless, the prefix ‘post’ in poststructuralism is still often asso-
ciated with an all-consuming anti-foundationalism or a species of irra-
tionalism that abandons all forms of reason in social inquiry, leaving its
proponents totally sceptical about the values and norms of the ‘Enlight-
enment project’, as well as all things modern. In this view, the signifier
‘post’ functions as a kind of metaphor in which in Paul Feyerabend’s
notorious phrase ‘anything goes’. Hence, it is not surprising that the-
orists associated with poststructuralism have been targeted by stunts
like Alan Sokal’s infamous hoax article – ‘Transgressing the Bound-
aries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity’ –
which was submitted and accepted for publication in Social Text in the
spring/summer edition of 1996, even though it was cobbled together
in a deliberately obscurantist fashion. (The article served as a precur-
sor to the publication of a book-length critique of poststructuralism,
which was co-written with Jean Bricmont, with the self-explanatory
title of Intellectual Impostures, as well as a further book entitled Beyond
the Hoax).1 The alleged irrationalism, eclecticism, and relativism of
58 Poststructuralism and After

poststructuralism also explains why thinkers like Michel Foucault,

Jacques Lacan, and Julia Kristeva are regularly singled out for ridicule in
popular books such as Francis Wheen’s How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the
World, Raymond Tallis’s Enemies of Hope, or Terry Eagleton’s The Illusions
of Postmodernism (Eagleton, 1996; Tallis, 1997; Wheen, 2005).2
On a more serious note, the prefix ‘post’ in poststructuralism allegedly
runs the risk of introducing a chronic historical and semantic instability
into our characterization of thinkers and intellectual traditions. This is
evident, first, in the fact that there is precious little agreement amongst
scholars about the precise meaning and scope of the concept, even
for those who identify with or propagate the term (see Hassan, 1987,
pp. 87–8). This conceptual stretching leads commentators like Dick
Hebdige to suggest that terms like postmodernism and poststructuralist
are little more than ‘buzzwords’, rather than serious theoretical divisions
(Hebdige, 2002). A second difficulty is that the prefix ‘post’ implies a
sharp chronological separation between two intellectual movements –
structuralism and poststructuralism – as if the terms mapped precisely
onto a particular set of thinkers at specific stages in the development of
ideas. Yet a cursory glance of those who are named poststructuralists
shows a blurring of any clear-cut historical divisions that demarcate
structuralism and poststructuralism. Indeed, as we shall see, one impor-
tant theoretical move associated with poststructuralists such as Derrida
and Foucault is to deconstruct clear-cut binary oppositions that lead
either to the positing of sharp discontinuities between historical peri-
ods, or which assume necessary or teleological continuities amongst
dispersed phenomena.
A third reason why the concept of poststructuralism is often deemed
problematic is because it straddles a number of disciplines in the human
and social sciences – philosophy, history, literary studies, psychology,
sociology, political theory, and so on – without being clearly rooted
in any one of them. Questions are thus asked about the scope and
relevance of this theoretical tradition for any one particular discipline
or sub-discipline. Fourthly, there are queries about the status of the
term. Is poststructuralism principally a descriptive term? Or does it
also carry normative, prescriptive, and evaluative connotations? Finally,
many of the supposed founding figures of the movement rarely, if ever,
describe themselves as poststructuralists (or postmodernists). In fact,
they were often at pains to refuse such labels. For example, in a late inter-
view, which was published under the title of ‘Structuralism and Post-
Structuralism: An Interview with Michel Foucault’, Foucault declared
himself ‘not up to date’ about debates concerning modernity and
 Problematizing Poststructuralism 59

postmodernity, and he studiously avoids initial questioning about the

concept of poststructuralism. Distancing himself from these notions,
he accepts the idea of structuralism, behind which ‘there was a certain
problem – broadly speaking that of the subject and the recasting of the
subject’ – but proclaims not to ‘understand what kind of problem is com-
mon to the people we call post-modern or post-structuralist’ (Foucault,
1983; 1988b, p. 34).
This has led commentators such as Slavoj Žižek to argue that a term
like ‘poststructuralist deconstructionism’ was largely ‘invented in the
USA, for and by the American academic gaze, with all its constitutive
limitations’ (Žižek, 2000a, p. 242). More precisely, as he continues,

the prefix post in ‘poststructuralism’ is . . . a reflexive determination in

the strict Hegelian sense of the term: although it seems to designate
the property of its object – the change, the cut, in the French intel-
lectual orientation – it actually involves a reference to the gaze of the
object perceiving it: ‘post’ means things that went on in French the-
ory after the American (or German) gaze had perceived them, while
‘structuralism’ tout court designates French theory ‘in itself’, before
it was noted by the foreign gaze. ‘Poststructuralism’ is structuralism
from the moment it was noted by the foreign gaze.
(Žižek, 2000a, pp. 242–3)

Poststructuralism and after?

Despite these many queries and limitations, I still think it important

to retain the name and the concept of poststructuralism. As I shall
argue in this book, the term captures a particular style of social the-
orizing, in which the signifier post qualifies a particular model of
structuralist thinking. It also connotes a critical ethos of investiga-
tion, which arises from a distinctive set of philosophical presumptions.
Finally, poststructuralism also serves as a useful device for naming and
classifying a diverse range of different thinkers and theorists, even if
those theorists do not necessarily accept the description itself.
Yet this still raises questions about the title and overall aim of the
book. Why Poststructuralism and After? A cursory glance through most
university library catalogues discloses that the qualifier ‘after’ is a fairly
common way to name the subject matter of a book, article or essay,
especially in the humanities and social sciences: After Liberalism, After
Marxism, After 1989, After Theory, and so forth. It is often used as a way
of re-marking (upon) the importance of a concept, idea, event, or body
60 Poststructuralism and After

of discourse, thus indicating its impact on future events or processes.

But the employment of the temporal qualifier ‘after’ can also have
a more profound philosophical or theoretical import. For example,
in After Virtue, Alasdair Macintyre uses the signifier ‘after’ to propose
his key hypothesis that ‘the language of morality’ in our modern or
post-Enlightenment societies has fallen into ‘grave disorder’. ‘What we
possess’, he argues,

if this view is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts

which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived.
We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of
the key expressions. But we have – very largely, if not entirely – lost
our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.
(Macintyre, 1984, p. 2)

Part of Macintyre’s project is to emphasize the discontinuity between

our modern or postmodern world, in which there is no stable
moral framework with which to judge and evaluate, and those pre-
modern contexts in which notions like virtue, justice, and morality
once operated in a meaningful and coherent fashion. Macintyre’s
ideas of rupture and loss capture one aspect of the shift from
structuralism to poststructuralism, and then from poststructuralism to
‘after poststructuralism’. Yet it is by no means the only connection
I want to stress, nor in fact is it decisive. Instead, there are important
continuities, reiterations, and rearticulations in the transition from one
to the other. The post and the after in the title speak to these continuities
and discontinuities.
What, then, is the precise significance of post and after in
Poststructuralism and After? Why the double distancing from structur-
alism: poststructuralism and after poststructuralism? The full answers to
these two questions make up the substance of this book: its proof is in
the pudding so to speak. Yet the general response to these questions
emerges from a critical evaluation of the poststructuralist intervention,
supposing provisionally that we can speak of this intervention in the
singular. Although there is no watertight consensus on the character
and import of poststructuralism, I think it is true to say that most
poststructuralists do concur on some basic theoretical strategies and
tactics. For one thing, they contest those perspectives that reify social
relations and phenomena by treating them as natural, or by systemat-
ically ignoring their political ‘origins’ or social significance. They thus
agree that our concepts, discourses, institutions, and social hierarchies
 Problematizing Poststructuralism 61

are not eternal and fixed entities, but historical and social constructions.
Here they employ a panoply of textual, social, historical, and practical
tactics to disrupt structures, expose ambiguities, and contest processes
we often take for granted. As William Connolly puts it, by ‘attending to
rhetorical figures, narrative structure, self-subversive discourse, intertex-
tualities, and a variety of other mechanisms through which modernist
and postmodern discourses implicitly foster closure in the terms of polit-
ical debate’, they disclose the duplicities, undecidabilities, and rhetorical
organization of writings, speeches, practices, institutions, and various
regimes of power (Connolly, 1991, p. 58).
Continuing in this vein, I shall also insist that our social and histor-
ical constructions, including our concepts and forms of consciousness,
are not essential or eternal. They are not grounded in nature or rooted
in the way things really are; nor do they simply mirror or track a sta-
ble, underlying social reality. On the contrary, they are contaminated
by multiple impurities and differences that problematize stable essences
or pure forms. For example, the category of ‘Man’ is not understood
as an unchanging essence or form, but a culturally and discursively
constructed subject position with which individuals and groups can
identify. This move enables poststructuralists (and others) to show how
the category of ‘Man’ has been produced in different historical contexts
for different purposes and in line with various interests; it also enables
poststructuralists to explore the way humanist values and ideals (such
as the ‘rights of Man’) can be linked to other values and projects (such
as ‘European values’ or ‘Western civilization’) or employed to advance
the emancipation of subjugated groups (such as women, slaves, or sex-
ual minorities). Universals are thus stained by particularities; identities
are marked by various differences; essences harbour irreducible contin-
gencies; concerns about the being of things or objects are replaced by
attentiveness to their multiple ‘becomings’. In short, different theoret-
ical perspectives and positions are contestable articulations, in which
there are no ultimate and transcendental epistemological grounds for
privileging one over another, though this does not mean that we can-
not in any particular context support one position rather than another
or argue from a particular perspective that one interpretation is better
than another in various respects.
In this approach, then, apparently stable and natural constructs or
hierarchies are seen to be predicated on the exclusion of differences and
impurities, and/or they are concealed by the operation of power and
ideology. Poststructuralists are thus particularly concerned with the lim-
its of our concepts and notions, as well as the instituted boundaries of
62 Poststructuralism and After

concrete social phenomena. These include identities and social move-

ments, as well as social systems such as capitalism or modernity. What
is more, these boundaries are not external to concepts or phenom-
ena, for they partly define their identities. In fact, these identities are
always vulnerable to the disruptive effects of those forces that con-
stitute boundaries – politically and theoretically – and they are often
contested in various ways. Poststructuralists have thus reworked notions
like contradiction, opposition, and crisis, whilst developing concepts
like dislocation, incompatibility, and social antagonism to rethink the
role of limits in social and political life, and to develop a non-reducible
notion of negativity.
Such theoretical manoeuvres are not unconditional or without pre-
supposition but rely upon a particular constellation of pre-existing
theoretical currents. What, then, are the philosophical and theoretical
resources that poststructuralists draw upon in developing their critical
explanations, and what conceptual strategies and tactics do they employ
in doing so? It is often claimed or supposed that poststructuralism is
wholly against Marxism or that it is anti-phenomenological and anti-
structuralist. Some even suggest that it is anti-rationalistic, dangerously
anti-humanist, and dismissive of science. Yet whilst poststructuralists
are often critical of thinkers associated with these traditions of thought,
in that they are critical of concepts like form, identity, presence, and
structures, and though they question certain sorts of social systems,
such as capitalism, modernity, the sex/gender system, colonialism,
and so forth, they are not squarely against Marxism, phenomenology,
structuralism, psychoanalysis, and so on. Instead, their style is to work
within and against various metaphysical and philosophical traditions
so as to discern and probe their limits, and to disrupt various logics and
systems defined by these limits.
Perhaps surprisingly, then, for some at least, one important source
of inspiration for poststructuralist thinking is the work of Marx, and
the Marxist tradition more generally, especially the way critical Marxists
weave together the tasks of explanation, critique, and evaluation. For
example, in Marx’s critique of bourgeois political economists such as
Adam Smith and David Ricardo in The Poverty of Philosophy, he discerns
an opposition in their writings between nature – or the ‘metaphysical
point of view’ – and history:

Economists have a singular method of procedure. There are only

two kinds of institutions for them, artificial and natural. The institu-
tions of feudalism are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie
 Problematizing Poststructuralism 63

are natural institutions. In this, they resemble the theologians, who

likewise establish two kinds of religion. Every religion which is not
theirs is an invention of men, while their own is an emanation from
God. When the economists say that present-day relations – the rela-
tions of bourgeois production – are natural, they imply that these
are the relations in which wealth is created and productive forces
developed in conformity with the laws of nature. These relations
therefore are themselves natural laws independent of the influence
of time . . . eternal laws which must always govern society.
(Marx, 1997d, pp. 226–7)

In this characteristic passage, Marx problematizes the naturalization and

eternalization of certain social forms, which conceal their historicity and
contingency.
In the place of eternal laws and properties, Marx discerns differ-
ent modes of production, which emerge in different historical periods;
indeed, these various modes define and specify distinct historical peri-
ods. As he puts it, ‘feudal production, to be judged properly, must be
considered as a mode of production founded on antagonism. It must
be shown how wealth was produced within this antagonism, how the
productive forces were developed at the same time as class antagonisms,
how one of the classes . . . went on growing until the material conditions
for its emancipation had attained full maturity.’ Indeed, his point can
be generalized:

Is not this as good as saying that the mode of production, the rela-
tions in which productive forces are developed, are anything but
eternal laws, but that they correspond to a definite development of
men and of their productive forces, and that a change in men’s pro-
ductive forces necessarily brings about a change in their relations of
production?
(Marx, 1997d, p. 227)

In short, along with other Marxists like Georg Lukács, as well as non-
Marxists like Karl Polanyi, poststructuralists are thus agreed on a strategy
of denaturalizing and historicizing social relations and processes, such
as the market system or the natural laws of the economy. The latter are
not fixed and eternal, but precarious, incomplete, and changeable.
Yet in this spirit poststructuralists also contest essentialist and natural-
izing tendencies in Marxism and other traditions. They thus explore and
disrupt the limits of Marxist assumptions and concepts, as they question
64 Poststructuralism and After

Marx’s search for ‘iron laws’ of political economy and historical progress,
as well as his tendency to essentialize certain social relations or domains,
like the economy, thus conceding to them a determining role in criti-
cal explanation. Poststructuralism is thus consonant in certain respects
with post-Marxism and other postfoundational currents (such as post-
analytical philosophy and Richard Rorty’s pragmatism) in that it breaks
with Marxist essentialism and various forms of metaphysics, but it still
works within these traditions to develop new pathways and explore fore-
closed potentials. Poststructuralists do not simply reject approaches or
things, but work immanently ‘to unsettle their exclusive claims to truth and
purity’ (Williams, 2005, p. 8). In equal measure, they are happy to work
within and against the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Martin
Heidegger by exploring the limits of this tradition, whilst disrupting and
reworking some of its core assumptions and concepts. ‘Because of its
commitment to openness and to a resistance to the definition of lim-
its in terms of identity, poststructuralists are opposed to all forms of
essentialism, determinism and naturalism’ (Williams, 2005, p. 8). These
twin theoretical operations of denaturalization and de-essentialization
are evident in a number of academic disciplines and fields, including
various branches of sociology, political theory and science, international
relations, as well as cultural studies, literary theory, history, legal theory,
and other fields in the social and humans sciences.

Substantive limitations

My introduction of some poststructuralist assumptions and strate-

gies enables us to distil a number of its characteristic gestures. The
poststructuralist approach involves the denaturalization and question-
ing of seemingly obvious and fixed concepts and social forms; the
detection and critique of social hierarchies and political exclusions by
showing the role of power and ideology in their construction and repro-
duction; the deconstruction, reversal, and inversion of these relations of
power and domination; and the construction of alternative conceptual
infrastructures and social relations that are open to exclusions and the
play of differences. What is more, this approach is rooted in a distinc-
tive set of ontological and epistemological presuppositions, as well as a
particular methodological orientation.
Yet, in addition to debates about the naming and framing of
poststructuralism and poststructuralist thinkers, the approach has also
attracted much substantive critique from a number of quarters. Not
unexpectedly, an array of conservative critics takes issue with the radical
 Problematizing Poststructuralism 65

implications of poststructuralist thinking, as well as its apparently rel-

ativist and anti-foundational overtones. For example, in his stinging
critique of the Enlightenment project in After Virtue, Alasdair Macintyre
asks us to choose between Aristotle or Nietzsche, in which the latter
represents the starting point of an unbridled and ungrounded subjec-
tivism that leads ineluctably to the postmodern and poststructuralist
ways of thinking. For Macintyre, the path from Nietzsche to Foucault
and Derrida is the logical culmination of the Enlightenment’s abandon-
ment of a rational moral foundation, which could properly vindicate
and justify our beliefs and ethical values (MacIntyre, 1984). Similar
objections are evident in those that take their lead from conservative
thinkers like Leo Strauss and Michael Oakeshott.3
From a different perspective, various strands of hermeneutical think-
ing are also critical of poststructuralist thinking. Charles Taylor, for
example, worries about the nihilistic and subjectivistic tendencies in
poststructuralist thinking, which he also traces back to the baleful
influence of Nietzsche. In Taylor’s words, poststructuralists like Derrida
and Foucault ‘disclaim any notion of the good’ and ‘end up celebrat-
ing . . . the potential freedom and power of the self’ (Taylor, 1989, p. 488).
This means that for a thinker like Derrida

there is nothing but deconstruction, which swallows up the old hier-

archical distinctions between philosophy and literature, and between
men and women, but just as readily could swallow up equal/unequal,
community/discord, uncoerced/constrained dialogue, and the like.
Nothing emerges from this flux worth affirming, and so what in fact
comes to be celebrated is the deconstructing power itself, the prodi-
gious power of subjectivity to undo all potential allegiances which
might bind it; pure untrammelled freedom.
(Taylor, 1989, p. 489)

Instead, Taylor draws on Heidegger and Gadamer to emphasize the cen-

trality of meaning and interpretation in social science, claiming that
man is a ‘self-defining’ and ‘self-interpreting’ animal, whose changes
in self-definition go hand-in-hand with the changes in what he is, and
how he is to be understood (Taylor, 1985b, p. 55). From this perspective,
the more complex the available language within which actors construct
their experiences – the more refined, for example, the moral contrasts
in their semantic field – the richer the articulations and the ‘strong eval-
uations’ that are made possible by it (see Glynos and Howarth, 2007,
pp. 52–9, 70–4).
66 Poststructuralism and After

According to Taylor, then, the deconstruction of moral and ethical

discourse by poststructrualists like Derrida and Foucault undermines
the project of normative evaluation. But perhaps the most concerted
engagement with poststructuralism is evident in a series of critical inter-
ventions by the German social theorist Jürgen Habermas. His critiques
culminated in the publication of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity
in 1985, which deserves closer attention. One notable Habermasian
theme that emerges in this text is the idea that the postmodernist and
poststructuralist traditions of thought are not really theoretical tradi-
tions at all. In Habermas’s terms, they are not concerned with questions
pertaining to theoretical reason – questions about whether we know
something, how we know it, and so forth – because questions of truth
and objectivity are subverted by what he calls a ‘levelling of the genre
distinction between philosophy and literature’, which leads to a kind
of ‘universalised aestheticization’ of social and political life (Habermas,
1987, pp. 185–210; Žižek, 1989, p. 153).
Postmodernists thus abandon the search for context-independent
or universal validity claims that can lead to the establishment of
more emancipated social formations. They search instead for ‘pri-
vate perfection’, to use Rorty’s suggestive phrase, in which ‘self-
created, autonomous human life’ (Rorty, 1989, p. xiv) can be imagined
through the invention of new metaphors and artistic experiences –
what Habermas calls ‘the poetic use of language specialized in world-
disclosure’, rather than the language of problem-solving, social learning,
and practical communication (Habermas, 1987, p. 205). Indeed, in
Habermas’s view, theorists such as Derrida are not in the business of
arguing and making claims at all but are more concerned with ‘limit
experiences of an aesthetic or mystical kind’ (Habermas, 1987, p. 309).
‘Derrida does not belong to those philosophers who like to argue’,
says Habermas, whilst Foucault’s various critiques of power and ratio-
nality amount to little more than a ‘crypto-normativism’ (Habermas,
1987, p. 193).
Although Habermas has recently softened these harsh judgements,
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity has established clear lines of
difference between different schools of social and political theory.4
Habermas for his part frames his critique of poststructuralism in terms
of an intense debate about the nature of modernity, in which ‘the entry
into postmodernity’ is traced back to Nietzsche’s critique of Western
metaphysics, where the latter appears to support the ideal of a tran-
scendent reason and truth that can go beyond particular contexts of
 Problematizing Poststructuralism 67

meaning and everyday practices (Habermas, 1987, pp. 83–105). Hence

Habermas argues that

Nietzsche owes his concept of modernity, developed in terms of his

theory of power, to an unmasking critique of reason that sets itself
outside the horizon of reason. This critique has a certain suggestive-
ness because it appeals, at least implicitly, to criteria borrowed from
the basic experiences of aesthetic modernity. Nietzsche enthrones
taste, ‘the Yes and No of the palate’, as the organ of a knowledge
beyond true and false, beyond good and evil. But he cannot legiti-
mate the criteria of aesthetic judgment that he holds on to because
he transposes aesthetic experience into the archaic, because he does
not recognise as a moment of reason the critical capacity for assess-
ing value that was sharpened through dealing with modern art – a
moment that is still at least procedurally connected with objectifying
knowledge and moral insight in the process of providing argumenta-
tive grounds. The aesthetic domain, as the gateway to the Dionysian,
is hypostatized instead into the other of reason. The disclosures of
power theory get caught up in the dilemma of a self-enclosed critique
of reason that has become total.
(Habermas, 1987, p. 96)

In this characteristic passage, Habermas draws attention to the way

Nietzsche provides a totalizing critique of reason from an aesthetic
vantage point that is entirely external to reason. But he does so by
illegitimately employing criteria of aesthetic judgment that are sev-
ered from their original theoretical context and thus denuded of
their critical capacity. Moreover, as he argues with respect to other
poststructuralist and anti-Enlightenment thinkers like Adorno and
Horkheimer, Heidegger, and Foucault, this move results in what he calls
a ‘performative self-contradiction’, in which the critics of Enlighten-
ment are either compelled (illegitimately and unconsciously) to employ
reason’s resources in order to provide a complete critique of reason and
rationality, or their critiques are left without any theoretical ground at
all (see Thomassen, 2006).
According to Habermas, Nietzsche’s critique of modernity yields two
possible postmodern paths that reflect an oscillation between two strate-
gies. One possibility envisaged by Nietzsche ‘sees the possibility of an
artistic contemplation of the world carried out with scholarly tools
but in an antimetaphysical, antiromantic, pessimistic, and sceptical
68 Poststructuralism and After

attitude’ (Habermas, 1987, pp. 96–7). With this frame of mind, there is
the promise of a historical science that can serve an alternative ‘will to
power’ by escaping from ‘the illusion of belief in truth’, and Habermas
identifies thinkers like George Bataille, Jacques Lacan, and Foucault as
seeking to demystify a perverted will to power by employing ‘anthropo-
logical, psychological, and historical methods’ (Habermas, 1987, p. 97).
A second possible critique of Western metaphysics ‘digs up the roots
of metaphysical thought without, however, itself giving up philoso-
phy’ (Habermas, 1987, p. 97). Here Habermas identifies thinkers like
Heidegger and Derrida as ‘initiate-critics’ of metaphysical thinking, who
pretend they have a unique kind of knowledge by pursuing ‘the rise
of the philosophy of the subject back to its pre-Socratic beginnings’
(Habermas, 1987, p. 97).
But, as is intimated in his critique of Nietzsche, Habermas is
not satisfied with merely exposing the alleged epistemological and
methodological deficits of poststructuralist thinking, for his critique
also carries an explicit political and ethical force. This is because
the poststructuralist critique of reason simultaneously undermines the
emancipatory potentials of modernity and the Enlightenment project.
Once again, Habermas places Nietzsche at the origins of this develop-
ment. ‘With Nietzsche’, he argues, ‘the criticism of modernity dispenses
for the first time with its retention of an emancipatory content. Subject-
centred reason is confronted with reason’s absolute other. And, as a
counter-authority to reason, Nietzsche appeals to experiences that are
displaced back into the archaic realm – experiences of self-disclosure
of a decentred subjectivity’ (Habermas, 1987, p. 94). In a similar vein,
later postmodernists are allegedly drawn back to ‘archaic times’ or are
attracted to religious motifs, which are evident in Derrida’s closeness to
‘Jewish mysticism’. Finally, Habermas also emphasizes their connections
to the ‘dark side’ of the Enlightenment, as well as the involvement of
some postmodernists with totalitarian politics, such as Heidegger’s sup-
port for National Socialism in the 1930s (Habermas, 1987, pp. 155–60).
Ultimately, then, poststructuralist and postmodernist thought is little
more than a ‘new conservativism’ in Habermas’s eyes, which threat-
ens to undermine the rational ideals and gains of the Enlightenment
project.5
In short, as against the complete abandonment of Enlightenment ide-
als because of their complicity with a totalizing logic of domination,
modernity is best viewed as an ‘incomplete project’, whose rational
resources can be recuperated and vindicated in a future emancipated
order. More concretely, in his later writings, Habermas argues that this
 Problematizing Poststructuralism 69

recuperation is best achieved by developing a project of ‘deliberative

democracy’ in which free and equal citizens are guided by the force
of the better argument to converge on binding norms and decisions
within a justly constituted polity (Habermas, 1996). Finally, as we shall
see in Chapter 7, these abstract principles have informed a Habermasian
concern with a ‘politics of redistribution’, which is focussed mainly on
various material inequalities facing oppressed groups in society, which
can counter an over-valourization of questions of cultural identity and
subjectivity that is evident in those favouring a ‘politics of recogni-
tion’ (Benhabib, 2002; Butler, 1998; Fraser, 1997a; 1997b; Fraser and
Honneth, 2003).
Habermas’s critique of poststructuralism, when placed alongside his
commitment to the Enlightenment idea of a universal reason that
can bring about human emancipation, partly reflects his Marxist back-
ground (Habermas, 1976). Even more so, it reflects the development of
his communicative theory of rationality, which is premised on a cri-
tique and fundamental reconstruction of historical materialism (which
I discuss in Chapter 3). More orthodox renditions of Marxist critique
also problematize poststructuralism. For example, in his sweeping eval-
uations of Western Marxism, Perry Anderson has sought to provide
a Marxist account of structuralist and poststructuralist theory. In the
Tracks of Historical Materialism provides a detailed analysis of both
traditions by focussing on their efforts to deal with an essential prob-
lem within Marxist theory, namely, ‘the nature of the relationship
between structure and subject in human history and society’ (Anderson,
1983, p. 33).
However, in Anderson’s view, the resources of structuralism and
poststructuralism, drawing mainly on Saussure’s structural linguistics,
have proved inadequate to the task, so that the ‘unresolved difficul-
ties and deadlocks within Marxist theory, which structuralism promised
to transcend, were never negotiated in detail within this rival space’
(Anderson, 1983, p. 33). Instead, in his words, ‘the adoption of the
language model as the “key to all mythologies”, far from clarifying
or decoding the relations between structure and subject, led from a
theoretical absolutism of the first to a fragmented fetishism of the sec-
ond, without ever advancing a theory of their relations’ (Anderson,
1983, p. 55). In sum, in Anderson’s damning conclusion (written in
1983), ‘Paris today is the capital of European intellectual reaction, in
much the same way that London was thirty years ago’ (Anderson,
1983, p. 32). What is more, his polemic against postmodernism and
poststructuralism continues in The Origins of Postmodernity, where he
70 Poststructuralism and After

likens its ‘standard tropes of an anti-essentialist, antifoundationalist

rhetoric’ – the critique of human nature; the idea of history as random
process; equations of class with race or gender; renunciations of totality
or identity; speculations of an undetermined subject’ – to ‘the common
nonsense of the age’ (Anderson, 1998, p. 115).
A host of critical realists, including Roy Bhaskar, Alex Callinicos, Bob
Jessop, Jeremy Joseph, and Jonathan Davies, also ally themselves with
the Marxist tradition, though they sometimes voice reservations about
certain elements of Marx’s social and political theory (e.g., Bhaskar,
1998; Callinicos, 2008; Davies, 2011; Joseph, 2002; 2006). However,
they are united in dismissing the explanatory and critical potentials of
a coherent and illuminating poststructuralist social theory. In the main,
their critiques are directed at the ontological and critical deficiencies in
poststructuralism. Bhaskar, for example, describes poststructuralism as a
‘new idealism’ – the reduction of reality to thought – which is wedded to
a form of cultural and moral relativism, to which he opposes an ‘onto-
logically realist account of science’ and a ‘critical naturalist account of
the human sciences’ (Bhaskar, 1989, pp. 146–7, 191). In this way, pro-
ponents of poststructuralist theory such as Derrida, Foucault, Laclau,
and Mouffe are frequently chided for their philosophical, sociologi-
cal, normative, and methodological naivety. They are often accused
of an ‘idealism’ or ‘textual reductionism’ that obliterates the distinc-
tion between the discursive, the non-discursive, and the extra-discursive
(Hay, 2002, pp. 205–7; Jessop, 1982, p. 209; Katzenstein et al., 1998,
p. 678; Walters, 2002, pp. 88–9), thus leaving its proponents peddling a
‘bottomless, relativist gloom, in which opposed discourses or paradigms
are left with no common reference point, uselessly trading blows’ (Geras,
1987, p. 67). They are also charged of endorsing a social theory that
valorizes an ‘unconditional openness’ or ‘radical contingency’ of social
structures, which fails to account for the reproduction of social rela-
tions and says nothing about structure and agency, and of simply
describing or re-describing social phenomena without providing causal
explanations of them (Townshend, 2003, pp. 133–41). In short, they are
presented as purveyors of a purely negative critique or deconstruction of
social practices and regimes who refuse to propose positive alternatives
or who lack the requisite grounds for any supposed critiques and norma-
tive evaluations they do make (e.g., Benton and Craib, 2001; Callinicos,
2008; Geras, 1990).6
In these and other evaluations of poststructuralism from a Marxist
perspective, structuralism and poststructuralism represent little more
than a complete abandonment of Marxist theory at the explanatory and
 Problematizing Poststructuralism 71

normative levels. In a more philosophical and theoretical vein, most evi-

dent in his aptly named Logics of Disintegration: Post-Structuralist Thought
and the Claims of Critical Theory, Peter Dews contrasts poststructuralists
like Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard unfavourably with the Frankfurt
school Marxism of Adorno, Horkheimer, and Habermas (Dews, 1987).
Nonetheless, his conclusions are not dissimilar. Drawing on Theodor
Adorno’s ‘logic of disintegration’, in which ‘the historical process must
be understood as advancing both towards less and less mediated forms
of unity, and towards increasing antagonism and incoherence, because
of the abstraction built into the instrumental use of concepts’ (Dews,
1987, p. 224), Dews detects a similar logic at work in poststructuralist
thought. However, it also exhibits an important, yet problematic,
twist:

Post-structuralism does indeed seek for difference, but it does so

through an immersion in fragments and perspectives, not per-
ceiving that this splintering is itself the effect of an overbearing
totality, rather than a means of escape from it. In other words, post-
structuralism can be understood as the point at which the ‘logic of
disintegration’ penetrates into the thought which attempts to com-
prehend it, resulting in a dispersal into a plurality of inconsistent
logics. The results of this defensive mimetic adaptation can be seen
not only in the internal incoherences of different post-structuralist
positions, but also in their complementary onesidedness.
(Dews, 1987, pp. 231–2)

This onesidedness is manifest, for example, in the way that Derrida’s

deconstruction of Western metaphysics ‘is unable to provide any coher-
ent account of the emancipation which would be brought about
through an ending of compulsive identity . . . because of the lack of
any naturalistic component of the formation of the self’ (Dews,
1987, p. 232).
A more sympathetic, though somewhat ambiguous, account from a
Marxist perspective is evident in Fredric Jameson’s various evaluations.
Writing in the 1980s, for example, Jameson first presents the discourse of
poststructuralism as the theoretical reflection of postmodernism, argu-
ing that the latter is not just a description of a particular literary or
artistic style, but ‘a periodizing concept whose function is to correlate
the emergence of new formal features in culture with the emergence
of a new type of social life and a new economic order’, that is, a par-
ticular stage of capitalist development (Jameson, 1998, p. 3). But his
72 Poststructuralism and After

view is also permeated with ambiguities. On the one hand, he argues

that postmodernism and poststructuralism are essentially counter-
revolutionary movements, so that texts like Lyotard’s Postmodern Con-
dition amount to little more than anti-Marxist rhetoric and ideology
(Lyotard, 1984, p. 61). The main themes of postmodernism – the death
of the subject, the loss of historical sense, the increasing spatial disori-
entation, and so forth – are thus complicit with the reproduction of
the dominant capitalist social order. Yet, on the other hand, he also
appears to concede that poststructuralist theory constitutes an indispen-
sible means to provide a ‘global cognitive mapping’ of the new cultural
logics of multinational capitalism. Thus, for example, he argues that
the theoretical resources of poststructuralist theory enable us to better
grasp ‘the specificity of the postmodernist experience of space and time’,
which has been compressed and distorted by the logic of late capitalism.
They also focus our attention on the dramatic impacts of these changes
on various social, architectural, cultural, and political forms (Jameson,
1991). I shall return to these different inflections when I articulate my
alternative definition of poststructuralism.7

Friendly fire

Poststructuralists are understandably wary of these hostile char-

acterizations and judgments, especially the tendency to conflate
poststructuralism and postmodernism, and then to tar a disparate set of
thinkers with the same postmodernist brush (cf., Laclau, 2000; Poster,
1989; 1990). Yet there are also disagreements and differences of empha-
sis amongst those more positively disposed to the tradition. Perhaps
surprisingly, elements of Habermas’s critique are found in Slavoj Žižek’s
discussion of poststructuralism, as he endeavours to harness the theo-
retical energies of Hegel, Marx, and Lacan in a reconstructed project of
ideology critique. Žižek also identifies poststructuralism with the malign
influence of Nietzsche, who is charged with abandoning a commit-
ment to ‘truth-experiences’ and ‘truth-effects’ in the name of rhetorical
play (Žižek, 1989, p. 154). As a consequence, poststructuralists such as
Derrida, Foucault, Laclau, and Mouffe are said to privilege the role of
metonymy over metaphor in their respective social ontologies. That is
to say, they concede a logical predominance to the idea of a continuous
‘metonymical sliding’ of meaning – the idea that meanings and identi-
ties are never ultimately fixed – over the idea of a ‘metaphorical “cut” ’,
which can ‘stabilize, canalize, or dominate the metonymical dissipation
of the textual stream’ (Žižek, 1989, p. 154). Dissemination and unfixity
 Problematizing Poststructuralism 73

is thus privileged in poststructuralism over any form of fixation and sta-

bilization, and truth is sacrificed on the altar of rhetorical devices and
poetic flourishes.
At the same time, however, it is also alleged in this reading that the
poststructuralist poeticization of theoretical discourse conceals the fact
that poststructuralists do in fact propose clear theoretical propositions.
In fact, in Žižek’s eyes, it is too theoretical:

That is why post-structuralist commentaries often produce an effect

of ‘bad infinity’ in the Hegelian sense: an endless quasi-poetical varia-
tion on the same theoretical assumption, a variation which does not
produce anything new. The problem with deconstruction, then, is
not that it renounces a strict theoretical formulation and yields to a
flabby poeticism. On the contrary, it is that its position is too ‘theo-
retical’ (in the sense of a theory which excludes the truth-dimension;
that is, which does not affect the place from which we speak).
(Žižek, 1989, p. 155)

In short, whereas Habermas tends to lump together a whole range of

poststructuralist thinkers under the sign of ‘postmodernism’, Žižek con-
trasts Freud, Lacan, and his own approach with thinkers like Derrida,
Foucault, Laclau, and Mouffe.
Laclau, for his part, strenuously opposes these characterizations and
objections. In his view, the poststructuralist tradition ought to include
thinkers like Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze, as well as Lacan, Žižek, and
Copjec. At the same time, however, he argues that poststructuralism
is not synonymous with postmodernism in general, because it need
not include more extreme critics of modernity such as Jean Baudrillard
and Lyotard. In Laclau’s view, then, Habermas illegitimately treats all
poststructuralists as postmodernists and provides an overly rationalist
dismissal of their arguments in the name of a potentially transparent
and pure logic of modernity, whilst Žižek creates a forced dichotomy
within the poststructuralist tradition, for example, by opposing Lacan
and Derrida and by privileging moments of necessity – the role of
metaphor or truth – over impossibility or contingency.
Laclau’s alternative reading of poststructuralism hinges on an unde-
cidable play between the logics of necessity and impossibility (Laclau,
2000, p. 75). Situating poststructuralism within the so-called linguistic
turn in Western philosophy and theory (cf., Rorty, 1967), Laclau thus
charts a shift from an ‘illusion of immediacy’, in which thought is pred-
icated on the existence of a presence or reality that is simply given to
74 Poststructuralism and After

consciousness, to the constructed, mediated, and ultimately contingent

character of all objectivity. He thus posits a progressive anti-essentialist
movement in twentieth century philosophy and social theory, which
is manifest in structuralism, phenomenology, Marxism, psychoanalysis,
and analytical philosophy. In each of these traditions, therefore, Laclau
argues that an unmediated given or objectivity – for example, the facts
of the matter, the phenomenon, or a grounded reason – is shown to
be constructed and contingent. First, postanalytical philosophers such
as the later Wittgenstein, Donald Davidson, and Richard Rorty question
the commitment to any foundational connection between a name and
a thing by introducing notions like ‘language games’, ‘forms of life’,
and the totality of actual linguistic behaviour, which necessarily pre-
cedes any logic of reference. In a parallel way, Heidegger’s existential
phenomenology challenges the concept of a transcendental subjectivity
that confronts a phenomenon, which appears in its consciousness by
situating all such ‘subjects’ and phenomena within the context of mean-
ingful practices. And, finally, poststructuralists such as Derrida, Foucault,
Barthes, and Kristeva seek to deconstruct the metaphysical connotations
of the linguistic sign, especially the sharp distinction between the signi-
fier and the signified, by proposing the idea of incomplete structures of
signification that are marked by an irreducible play of meaning. In this
reading, therefore, Lacan’s contribution to this debate is to explore the
dialectic between an impossible object – the object petit a – that is sys-
tematically excluded and foreclosed in the constitution of any identity
or objectivity, yet at the same time is absolutely necessary for the latter.
Laclau’s contribution combines poststructuralist themes with Gramsci’s
‘philosophy of praxis’ to elaborate a distinctively post-Marxist social and
political theory. We shall return to this synthesis at various points later
in the book.

Remainders and deficits

As various commentators and critics contend, the poststructuralist

project is thus marked by numerous contaminations, remainders, and
deficits, both real and imagined. In fact, this problem is not especially
vicious in the eyes of many poststructuralists nor is it incompatible with
the ethos and style of poststructuralist theorizing, for poststructuralists
are willing to acknowledge the incomplete and contested character of
all concepts, theories, and practices. Nonetheless, on the basis of the
foregoing discussion, it is possible to delineate four clusters of problems
 Problematizing Poststructuralism 75

and questions, which will be explored in greater depth in the rest of

the book.

Omissions and imperfections

We can call our initial set of remainders the sins of omission and
commission. In the first place, there are various domains or aspects
of social relations that have been neglected or deliberately bracketed
out in the multiple deconstructive or genealogical quests carried out by
poststructuralists in different fields. To begin with, it is important to
stress that numerous poststructuralists have radically questioned con-
cepts like the economy, state, nature, the body, materiality, ideology,
human nature, and so forth in different disciplines and fields. They
have thus problematized the foundational or essentialist status of these
concepts or shown their dependence on excluded elements that are fore-
closed by the very construction and operation of these categories in
particular theoretical contexts. Poststructuralists have also criticized the
way these categories are conceived in different theoretical frameworks or
have exposed their complicated and ignoble emergences and descents.
Yet it is also true to say that these dominant categories have not them-
selves been explored in sufficient detail. For example, poststructuralists
have concentrated great energies on problematizing the essentialist role
of economic processes or relations in determining other social, polit-
ical, or cultural (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). But as Timothy Mitchell
has argued they have not devoted comparable energies to rethinking
the economy or to reworking our understandings of the relationship
between state and capitalism in different contexts (Mitchell, 2002a,
pp. 1–15). Similar thoughts might be expressed about the role of the
body or nature, as well as questions about passions and affects, in
poststructuralist theorizing. For example, as we have noted, Judith
Butler has emphasized the interweaving of sex and gender, nature and
culture, and so on. Yet even she freely admits that whenever she tries
to think and ‘write about the body, the writing ends up being about
language’ (Butler, 2004, p. 198).
Finally, whilst most poststructuralists accept that our knowledge and
understandings of natural phenomena are ‘discursively constructed’, so
that the meaning and import of things and processes depends upon
changing cultural frameworks, little effort has been directed at the
analysis and characterization of various sorts of natural phenomena,
with a view to exploring their impact on social forms and processes.
A group of ‘new materialists’ have in recent times taken up this
76 Poststructuralism and After

challenge (e.g., Coole and Frost, 2010). This has been developed by
poststructuralists like Jane Bennett, Connolly, Nathan Widder, and oth-
ers, who have developed Deleuze and Guattari’s particular critique of
essentialist and classical structuralism (e.g., Bennett, 2010; Connolly,
2005a; 2010; 2012; Widder, 2012) to reorient social theory, as well as
those who have drawn on phenomenological motifs (Coole, 2007).
Neglecting or parenthesizing such phenomena, it is claimed, has also
had the paradoxical effect of leaving intact very important sets of social
relations and hierarchies, which require detailed theoretical and practi-
cal attention. As Mitchell puts it, much poststructuralist critique leads
to the

curious fact that while critical theory has interrogated almost every
leading category of modern social science, it has left perhaps the most
central one untouched. It has critiqued the concepts of class, nation,
culture, society, state, gender, race, personhood, and many others,
but not the idea of the economy. It is though the varieties of cul-
tural theory had to leave in place a residual sphere of the economic,
as a reserve whose existence in the distance made cultural analysis
secure.
(Mitchell, 2002a, p. 3)

Indeed, a strong case could be made that poststructuralists ought

to devote even greater attention to conceptualizing, characterizing,
and critically explaining these dominant theoretical forms and social
processes, rather than the more marginal and counter-cultural prac-
tices with which they are sometimes associated. The immediate task
that emerges from this problematization is, therefore, to engage
those concepts and practices that have been rendered invisible by
poststructuralists in their legitimate desire to question essentialist and
naturalistic theorizations.
A related set of concerns arises from those concepts and relations that
have been deconstructed and only partially reconstructed by various
poststructuralists in different ways. Whilst old chestnuts like the rela-
tionship between transcendence and immanence, structure and agency,
space and time, representation and objective reality, ideology and sci-
ence have been dismantled and re-inscribed in various ways, and whilst
key concepts like power, identity, and subjectivity have been worked
upon in innovative and productive ways, much work still remains in
articulating and elaborating these new pathways. This gives rise to the
further challenge of fleshing out in more detail the positive alternative
 Problematizing Poststructuralism 77

conceptualizations of key issues in social and political theory. These

include the problem of structure and agency, the conception of power,
the role of ideology and representation in critical explanation, and
so forth.

The limits of negative critique

A third shortfall pertains to the role of critique, normative evalua-
tion, and the proposal of alternative norms or ideals. Poststructuralism
has made its name by elaborating careful genealogical deconstructions
of oppressive hierarchies, illegitimate power relations, and unproduc-
tive closures in our theoretical thinking. Yet in the view of many
critics, some friendly and others less so, the practice of negative cri-
tique does not, and ought not to, exhaust the tasks and practices of
poststructuralist theory. One prominent proponent of this view is Jürgen
Habermas, who takes issue with the way poststructuralists like Jacques
Derrida and Michel Foucault, as well as their philosophical precursors,
such as Friederich Nietzsche or Martin Heidegger, fail to provide rational
justifications for their attacks on oppressive and illegitimate power struc-
tures. He also berates their unwillingness to set out alternative norms
and principles, which would enable us to construct freer, more demo-
cratic, and emancipated societies (Habermas, 1987). These allegations
are also evident in the work of critical hermeneuticists like Charles
Taylor, who is equally sceptical about the normative foundations of
poststructuralist thinking (Taylor, 1985c; 1989; 2007).
In many respects, as I shall argue in this book, these claims are mis-
placed. For example, the very concept of a ‘performative contradiction’,
as Habermas puts it, is too rigid and exacting as a tool for dismissing
many poststructuralist perspectives (e.g., Habermas, 1987, pp. 276–93).
Yet there is a serious point to some of these allegations, for there has
been a tendency amongst many poststructuralists to restrict their work
to the critique of existing structures and relations. This is evident if
we return briefly to our discussion of international politics. Alongside
the probing of international relations as a field of social and political
science, as well as the critique of its substantive assumptions and presup-
positions, poststructuralists have also raised a series of meta-theoretical
questions about the methods, assumptions, research strategies, ethics,
and status of international relations as a discipline.
These issues are prominent, for example, in the 14 essays col-
lected together in the volume titled International/Intertextual Relations:
Postmodern Readings of World Politics (e.g., Der Derian and Shapiro, 1989).
This path-breaking volume successfully liberated a series of marginal
78 Poststructuralism and After

voices and unthought presuppositions in the discourse of interna-

tional relations. But with respect to these meta-questions it is possible
to discern a more defensive mood and a more limited set of aspi-
rations. In other words, despite their vital critiques of the dominant
paradigms, Ashley and other poststructuralists have been reluctant
to elaborate alternative positions and perspectives, which can offer
a positive antidote to the essentialist and metaphysical approaches
they criticize. Consider the following statements in Ashley’s influential
essay:

Poststructuralism cannot claim to offer an alternative position or

perspective, because there is no alternative ground upon which it
might be established. By the same token . . . it cannot refuse theory
and embrace history . . . What poststructuralism can do is invert the
hierarchy.
(Ashley, 1989, p. 278, cited in Connolly, 1991, p. 56)

The task of poststructuralist social theory is not to impose a gen-

eral interpretation, a paradigm of the sovereignty of man, as a
guide to the transformation of life on a global scale. In contrast
to modern social theory, poststructuralism eschews grand designs,
transcendental grounds or universal projects of humankind.
(Ashley, 1989, p. 284, cited in Connolly, 1991, p. 56)

Of course, Ashley is quite consistent (and correct) in these statements

to question the idea of an indubitable ground that can serve a univer-
sal and transcendental foundation for our inferences and judgements.
Yet his argument seems overly negative and restrictive, as it seems to
exclude more plausible alternatives, at the theoretical, empirical, and
normative levels. It seems to rule out the construction of other more
plausible narratives about social and political processes at the interna-
tional level, and it appears to eschew more inclusive moral and political
judgments.
Similar charges are also made by those who are sympathetic to the
poststructuralist project. For example, William Connolly and Simon
Critchley, who both work within or are very adjacent to the
poststructuralist tradition, have also raised questions about an overly
negative or totalizing critique amongst poststructrualists, which runs
the risk of an emasculated nihilism or the complicity with domi-
nant forces and logics (Connolly, 1991; Critchley, 2004). In turn, they
have sought to develop more positive alternatives, which they project
into their objects of study and philosophizing (Connolly, 1995; 2008a;
 Problematizing Poststructuralism 79

Critchley, 2007). In short, the offering of alternative visions has thus

been neglected or developed in an unconvincing fashion. I shall seek
in this book to respond to the challenge of a purely negative cri-
tique by elaborating on some of the arguments developed by Connolly,
Critchley, Laclau, and Mouffe, though my position will be different in
certain respects.

The dangers of multiplicity, difference, and fragmentation

Poststructuralists are probably best known for their anti-essentialist
social ontology and for their anti-reductionist accounts of identity
and agency. In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, drawing principally on
Derrida and Foucault, Laclau and Mouffe pronounced that ‘society’ was
not ‘a valid object of discourse’, and they affirmed ‘the impossibility
of any given discourse to implement a final suture’; every ‘discursive
totality’ is thus ‘incomplete and pierced by contingency’ (Laclau and
Mouffe, 1985, pp. 110–1). Building on Nietzsche, Foucault, and Deleuze,
Connolly stresses the ‘multiplicity of being’ and a ‘politics of becoming’,
rather than a stable and fixed conception of being (Connolly, 1996,
p. 257). Poststructuralist anarchists like Todd May and Saul Newman
also foreground notions like flux and the fleeting character of social real-
ity, whilst distancing themselves from a universal political programme
(e.g., May, 1994; Newman, 2005; 2010). Surplus, contingency, incomple-
tion, lack, abundance, and flux thus trump identity, essence, and fixity
in poststructuralist models of society and history.
Yet this raises a third set of questions about the substantive political
and ethical character of poststructuralist alternatives. For some crit-
ics, poststructuralists are said to endorse an approach that valorizes
an ‘unconditional openness’ or ‘radical contingency’ of social struc-
tures, which fails to account for the reproduction of social relations
and says nothing about structure and agency (e.g., Chouliaraki and
Fairclough, 1999; Habermas, 1987). Others argue that poststructuralists
and postmodernists dissolve the real sociological relationships between
structure and agency into questions about language and discourse.
In Stuart McAnulla’s words:

For the postmodernist there is no point in attempting to establish the

‘real’ relationship between structure and agency. Any understanding
we have of the issue is viewed as one constructed in the language and
discourse we use . . . There is no ‘structure’ and ‘agency’ which exists
‘out there’ to discover; they are merely concepts within a discourse
through which we apprehend and construct the world around us.
(McAnulla, 2002, pp. 282–3; see also Jessop, 1990)
80 Poststructuralism and After

Whilst it would be difficult to see how our understanding of the issue

could avoid being constructed in the language and discourse we use –
how can it not be the case that ‘structure’ and ‘agency’ are concepts
through which we apprehend and construct the world around us? – the
charge is relatively clear to state: poststructuralists dissolve the issue of
structure and agency into a tissue of linguistic differences that can be
moulded at will.
Political commentators like Gerry Stoker dispute the way ‘post-
modernists’ and poststructuralists allegedly celebrate difference, frag-
mentation, and relativism, thus reducing politics to a kind of narcissistic
subjectivism (e.g., Stoker, 2006, pp. 203–4). He argues that the main
goal of the latter is to construct an ‘expressive self’ whose only respon-
sibility is toward its ‘own values, lifestyle choices and circumstance’.
In these approaches, he alleges, we ‘lose faith in the capacity of our col-
lective agency’; politics in this view ‘becomes a hopeless and inevitably
frustrating charade’ (Stoker, 2006, p. 203). Other critics have sug-
gested that certain poststructuralist stances, especially those associated
with Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari, are just focussed on the role of
micropolitics and the molecular level of social relations, and not the
molar level, thus neglecting the broader relations of domination and
hegemony in society. For example, critics like Jodi Dean allege that
Connolly’s ethos of pluralization is mainly directed at a micro-politics of
self-modification, in which individuals must learn how to foster open-
ness towards ‘others’, but not at its embodiment within institutional
frameworks or arrangements (Dean, 2006, pp. 44–5).8
Joan Copjec’s critique of Foucault hinges on the charge that his
alleged historicism leaves no room for political resistance to power and
domination, and thus undermines the construction and employment
of universal categories and assumptions. In her view, Foucault believes
‘that every form of negation or resistance may eventually feed or be
absorbed by the system of power it contests’ (Copjec, 1994a, p. 10).
‘The techniques of disciplinary power (of the construction of the sub-
ject) are conceived as capable of “materially penetrating” the body
in depth without depending on the mediation of the subject’s own
representations . . . [let alone] through having first to be interiorized in
people’s consciousness’. Even in the act of resisting, Copjec continues,
‘(Foucault’s) panoptic argument . . . is unable to conceive of a discourse
that would refuse rather than refuel power’ (Copjec, 1994a, p. 10).
In short, resistance in this view becomes a chimera, because even where
it exists, it is taken into account in advance. Resistance simply serves to
incite new and more subtle processes of oppression.
 Problematizing Poststructuralism 81

Such sociological and political shortcomings are also seen to carry a

series of negative ethical and political implications. The poststructuralist
affirmation of difference drowns identity, whilst its emphasis on partic-
ularity comes at the expense of any universal ideals and principles. For
example, from a Lacanian and avowedly ‘dialectical materialist’ point
of view, Slavoj Žižek criticizes deconstruction, postmodernism, and
multiculturalism, because they are the cultural and ideological expres-
sions of late capitalism. For him, these developments represent the other
side of the ‘world capitalist system’, in which ‘multiculturalism’ epito-
mizes ‘the ideal form of ideology of . . . global capitalism’ (Žižek, 1999,
p. 216; see also Žižek, 1997; 2000a; Žižek and Daly, 2004, pp. 14–6,
146–52, 154–6). In its place, Žižek draws on philosophers like Alain
Badiou to affirm the ‘unconditional Faith’ of a traditional Marxism
that stresses the role of class struggle and the universal objectives of
the communist ideal (Žižek, 1999, p. 144). Badiou for his part defends
truth and class struggle against what he terms ‘postmodern sophistry’,
which reduces philosophy to ‘conventions, rules, genres of discourse,
and plays of language’ (cited in Barker, 2002, pp. 130–1; Goldstein, 2005,
pp. 61–3). He defends a rationalist conception of truth so as to underpin
his Marxist universalism.
Of course, these claims have been rebuffed and countered by pro-
ponents of poststructuralism. Post-Marxists like Ernesto Laclau and
Chantal Mouffe stress the importance of hegemony as a practice of
linking together contingent demands and identities into more universal
projects that can bring about qualitative social change in the face of sys-
temic structures of domination and oppression (such as the ‘sex/gender
system’) (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, p. 118). For example, in Hegemony
and Socialist Strategy they propose a project for radical democracy that is
predicated on what they call a ‘principle of democratic equivalence’,
and which involves a process of winning consent amongst a diver-
sity of particular struggles and demands, such as those put forward by
the ‘new social movements’ of the 1970s and 1980s. More precisely,
they call for the construction of a new ‘common sense’ that represents
a balanced tension of two mutually constitutive logics: the logics of
equality and autonomy (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, p. 184). In this con-
ception, demands for freedom, greater equality, and more social justice,
which challenge unfair relations of hierarchy and domination, should
be checked by the rights and liberties of individuals, and vice versa.
In short, therefore, at this stage of their writings, whilst they affirm a
broader and more inclusive form of politics, they also explicitly exclude
a strong and traditional type of universalism (such as those proposed
82 Poststructuralism and After

by Marxists and universal liberals), which they regard as incompatible

with struggles for a radical and plural democracy (Laclau and Mouffe,
1985, p. 191).
However, in his later writings, Laclau does not rule out the notion
of universality in favour of pluralism, autonomy, and diversity. Instead,
he puts forward a dialectical play between universality and particularity,
as every hegemonic project – every set of equivalences that is estab-
lished between a series of particular demands – seeks to universalize
its discourse by constructing an ‘empty signifier’, which can stand for
a fullness that is lacking. The idea of an empty signifier – the sym-
bolic representation of a flawed and ultimately elusive universality –
thus emerges in the struggle to ‘occupy the empty place of power’ if not
necessarily to ‘identify with it’ (Laclau, 2001b, p. 7). What is more, in
his most recent writings on populism, Laclau argues that populist dis-
course constructs and appeals to a collective subject such as ‘the people’
or ‘the community’ as the privileged subject of interpellation. It seeks
to install and naturalize a certain meaning of the people or its func-
tional equivalent, using such appeals to forge political identities and
thus recruit differently positioned subjects. In On Populist Reason, Laclau
also draws a strong link between populism and democracy: ‘democracy
is grounded only on the existence of a democratic subject, whose emer-
gence depends on the horizontal articulation between equivalential
demands’ (Laclau, 2005, p. 171). One implication is that the articu-
lation between democracy and liberalism is contingent (Laclau, 2005,
p. 167). Another is the distancing of democracy from any institutional
or organizational form. Laclau also distinguishes between questions of
normativity and ethics, in which the former refers to the values that
inform our descriptions and judgments, whereas the latter captures the
idea of a radical transcendence in which new subjectivities arise through
their identifications with new objects in conditions of acute dislocation.
Different arguments from similar premises are advanced by Judith
Butler, Bonnie Honig, Aletta Norval, and other poststructuralists, who
seek to inject more positive normative proposals into their critical expla-
nations, alongside the poststructuralist tasks of ethical and political
critique (e.g., Butler, 1993; 2000; 2001; Connolly, 1995; 2005a; 2005b;
Honig, 2009; Norval, 2007). Not unlike the arguments expressed in
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, a similar logic of contextualization and
historicization of political claims is at play in Judith Butler’s critique of
the sex/gender system. She uses the idea of rearticulation to show how
the empty universals of democratic politics can be invested with fem-
inist, minority, or even proletarian content (Butler, 1993, p. 191). The
 Problematizing Poststructuralism 83

signifiers of democracy, equality, and freedom can thus be articulated in

different ways in particular situations.
Yet she questions Laclau’s later writings by substituting a practice
of ‘cultural translation’, which she derives from Derrida and Gayatri
Spivak, for Laclau’s concept of an empty universalism (Butler, 2000,
p. 176). This leads her to rework the relationship between the universal
and the particular. In her words,

what emerges is a kind of political claim, which I would argue, is nei-

ther exclusively universal not exclusively particular; where, indeed,
the particular interests that inhere in certain cultural formations of
universality are exposed, and no universal is freed from its contami-
nation by the particular contexts from which it emerges and in which
it travels.
(Butler, 2000, p. 40)

Butler thus seeks to mediate between a strong universalism, in which

our values and ideals are grounded in a non-contextual and ahistorical
way, and a pure particularism that eschews any universalism at all and
affirms difference as such.
Aletta Norval also seeks to historicize and contextualize the ideals
and values associated with democracy (Norval, 2007). She thus shares
the poststructuralist commitment to radical contingency, and she dis-
tances herself from the universalism proposed by traditional Marxism,
Lacanian theory, and certain brands of liberalism, especially those who
advocate overly rationalist models of deliberative democracy. She draws
instead on Wittgenstein, Stanley Cavell, Laclau, and Jacques Rancière to
develop alternative ways of envisioning democratic practices and egali-
tarian forms of identification. The role of imagination is here accorded
an important place in making possible the articulation of new images
and pictures with which subjects can identify. Norval’s proposals are
most certainly not utopian and grand, as she problematizes definitive
emancipatory breaks. Nor do they fit a purely negative mode of critique,
for not unlike Connolly, Butler, and others in this regard, she does seek
to develop ‘interim visions’ that can orient demands and practices in
the present, though these new imaginaries are contingent and revisable
(Norval, 2007; 2012).
In short, then, poststructuralists emphasize the importance of multi-
plicity, difference, and pluralization to open up new ways of connecting
and disconnecting elements, which in other perspectives are deemed
necessary or essential. They also raise urgent ethical and normative
84 Poststructuralism and After

questions about the relationship between the assertion of universal

values (such as human rights and social justice) and the particular sit-
uations and contexts in which these ideals are affirmed and reiterated,
as well as strategic and political issues about the construction of alter-
native hegemonies, political alliances, and discourse coalitions. In fact,
these issues also pose questions about the unity and stability of social
orders and how the latter might be analysed, as well as foregrounding
debates about the role and place of ‘strategic essentialism’, the articu-
lation of utopias, and the relationship between critique and normative
evaluation/prescription. A final set of questions is raised about the way
in which the affirmation of universal values and ideals in the form of
empty signifiers can be rendered compatible with the poststructuralist
emphasis on radical contingency and the essential contestability of its
concepts and principles.

Methodological deficits
A final and not unrelated related set of criticisms focusses on the meth-
ods, analytical strategies, and research techniques of poststructuralism.
These criticisms range from narrow questions about the role of research
design and particular research methods to much broader issues about
the character of explanation, the role of interpretation, and its connec-
tion to values, ideals, and critique. Some argue that poststructuralist
reflection on these matters is virtually not existent, whilst others
argue that it is radically underdeveloped. Marxists, realists, and posi-
tivists perceive a self-refuting and paralysing relativism, coupled with
methodological anarchism, and scientific naïveté. On the realist side
of things, critics like Norman Geras, Colin Hay, and Bob Jessop accuse
poststructuralists of advocating an idealism or textual reductionism that
obliterates the distinction between the discursive, the non-discursive,
and the extra-discursive (e.g., Hay, 2002, pp. 205–7; Jessop, 1982,
p. 209). This linguistic idealism leaves its proponents peddling a ‘bot-
tomless, relativist gloom, in which opposed discourses or paradigms are
left with no common reference point, uselessly trading blows’ (Geras,
1987, p. 67).
From a slightly different angle, others have focussed on the status of
the interpretations and explanations that arise from a poststructuralist
perspective. For example, Jules Townshend has asserted that many stud-
ies carried out in the name of poststructuralism simply describe or
re-describe social phenomena without explaining them (Townshend,
2003, pp. 133–41). Others have concentrated on the dearth of method-
ological procedures and rules to guide the application of concepts and
 Problematizing Poststructuralism 85

logics to particular empirical phenomena (e.g., Torfing, 2005). A final

query can be captured under the sign of eclecticism. Do the various the-
oretical traditions and concepts that are articulated by poststructuralists
cohere into a consistent approach to social and political theory? Do they
have to? And if they are to do so, then how can this be achieved?
Poststructuralists have not remained silent in the face of these
charges, and they have made efforts to develop positive alternatives
to positivism (e.g., Glynos and Howarth, 2007; Howarth and Torfing,
2005). Yet there are still some significant differences in their responses,
and there are still outstanding questions that need further exploration.
Some have continued to affirm a form of methodological anarchism,
whilst others have called for more detailed methodological strategies.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of these positions, there are still impor-
tant issues that need further clarification, reflection, and elucidation.
Along with the other remainders and deficits named in this section, this
concern will be addressed in various places in the book.

Conclusion

This chapter has begun the process of problematizing and character-

izing the poststructuralist project in social and political theory. It has
provided a survey and evaluation of various critiques of this approach,
whilst endeavouring to problematize these problematizations. I have
thus set out a range of assessments of this tradition, and then con-
structed a particular definition of poststructuralism, which limits the
aims and scope of the book. In contrast to those who have plumbed for
a narrow definition of poststructuralism, and thus a limited number of
theorists and themes, which usually includes those who explicitly define
themselves in these terms, I have embraced a more capacious approach
in identifying and defining this style of thinking.
My criteria for identifying poststructuralist theorists and themes are
threefold. In the first place, a theorist must explicitly engage with or
draw upon the writings of what I have dubbed the first generation of
poststructuralists – Barthes, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva, and
Lacan – even though they may diverge from their initial orientations.
But their engagement should also endorse the idea that all social struc-
tures and subjects are contingent and incomplete, whilst rejecting a
commitment to positivist and empiricist conceptions of the human and
social sciences. According to this schema, therefore, Althusser moves us
toward poststructuralism, though his commitment to the role of eco-
nomic determinism leaves him within the fold of structural Marxism,
86 Poststructuralism and After

whereas the work of Balibar and Rancière move us closer to the idea
that structures are contingent and that historical processes are not tele-
ological or pre-determined (e.g., Althusser, 1969; Althusser and Balibar,
1970; Balibar, 1995; Rancière, 1998). Similarly, in the realm of urban
social theory, whilst the early work of Manuel Castells is firmly posi-
tioned in the structuralist tradition, his later writings moved away from
determinism and functionalism to a more poststructuralist orientation
(Castells, 1977; 1983).
I have also employed this conception to classify different theorists
and researchers associated with this style of theorizing into three gen-
erations, and I have presented various aspects of their contributions.
As I have insisted, this survey and classification does not claim to be
exhaustive, nor is it fully representative of all the nuances and differ-
ences in this approach. Instead, I have selected a series of examples
that serve as paradigms of particular sorts of arguments and various
kinds of problematique. Nonetheless, in my view, the character of the
poststructuralist project cannot be inferred from a simple addition of
these different exemplars. It is thus necessary to articulate my version of
the poststructuralist problematique in a more explicit way, which I shall
endeavour to do in Chapter 3.
3
Ontological Bearings

A striking feature of much contemporary social and political theory is

its concern with ontology. Indeed, as I argued in the previous chapter,
the poststructuralist style of theorizing is rooted in a particular set of
ontological commitments. Yet the turn to ontology is far from uncon-
troversial. Many social scientists consider ontological questions to be
at best irrelevant or at worst a misleading distraction from the proper
business of explaining the social world. Those who do accept that onto-
logical reflection is important often disagree about the meaning and
scope of the concept of ontology. In fact, even those who may share
an understanding of the concept probably disagree about the partic-
ular ontological assumptions that inform their research and thinking.
For example, whilst many poststructuralists share many ontological
assumptions, they often disagree about their respective understand-
ings of the subject or subjectivity or about the character and effects
of social structures on political agency. Another important disagree-
ment in poststructuralist theory divides those who affirm a philosophy
of immanence, as against a commitment to transcendence, as well as
an ontology of abundance rather than one of lack (Connolly, 2005b;
Howarth, 2010b; 2011; Tønder, 2005).
This chapter grapples with the problem of ontology in poststructuralist
theory. I start by considering the very need to take an ontological turn
in contemporary cultural theory and then address its character and
function. Here I draw mainly on the work of Martin Heidegger, who
began his quest to clarify the notion of ontology by seeking to radical-
ize Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, which was outlined in the
last chapter. As various thinkers have noted, from Michel Foucault to
Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, Heidegger’s various interventions
represent one of the first attempts to deconstruct and de-essentialize
ontology in Western philosophy. I shall then explore the connection

87
88 Poststructuralism and After

between general ontological questions and the development of partic-

ular social ontologies including poststructuralism. This discussion lays
the basis for exploring key ontological differences in poststructuralist
theory itself, which I explore in later chapters. Whilst these topics are
by their nature abstract and philosophical, they are not without sub-
stantive import, for they give rise to different ways of thinking about
politics, ethics, and subjectivity.

The ontological turn

Like many topics in social theory, the precise character and role of
ontology is strongly disputed. On the one hand, there are those who
are deeply sceptical, even hostile, about a return to ontological ques-
tions in the social sciences. Instead, many social scientists claim to have
discovered a paradigm or model of social behaviour, say the model of
rational economic behaviour in a free market, or a particular method of
inquiry, which can enable a practice of ‘normal science’ to be properly
grounded and conducted. Here it is assumed that a complete agreement
on a set of ontological assumptions has been or can be secured – the fact
that the social world comprises rational, self-interested individuals, for
example – which in turn makes possible detailed empirical research via
the generating and testing of falsifiable hypotheses, or it is believed that
ontological presuppositions and questions are ultimately irrelevant to
the pursuit of positive, value-free knowledge, and can thus be bracketed
out or dismissed.
This drive is bolstered by the development of sophisticated tech-
niques of data analysis, usually of a quantitative type, which proponents
believe can add a cumulative set of empirically tested statements and
generalizations to an established corpus of scientific knowledge about
the social world. Concerns with ontology in this view can rightfully be
consigned to the pre-scientific world of metaphysics from which they
came. (It is not difficult to discern the spectres of Auguste Comte or,
more recently, logical positivists such as Moritz Schlick and A. J. Ayer
lurking behind these impulses.) But the questioning of ontological
research is not restricted to positivist research programmes, for even
critics of positivism and logical empiricism are often sceptical about the
importance of ontological inquiry in the social sciences. Steve Fuller,
for instance, queries the need for continued theoretical reflection about
questions pertaining to the relationship between structure and agency
by arguing that these so-called ontological problems are ultimately
‘spurious’ – little more than ‘metaphysically inspired abstraction[s] from
 Ontological Bearings 89

a variety of relatively distinct problems of social control in the mod-

ern era’ – and are therefore irresolvable and best left alone (Fuller,
1998, p. 104).
A number of theorists and philosophers in the Marxist tradition
are also weary about the concept of ontology. For example, Theodor
Adorno, who tends to equate ontology with the work of Heidegger, has
strenuously opposed the ontological turn in social and political the-
ory. ‘In all its embattled trends, which mutually exclude each other as
false versions’, writes Adorno, ‘ontology is apologetical’ (Adorno, 1973,
p. 61). For Adorno, the main flaw amongst those who use the con-
cept of ontology in general, and especially Heidegger’s articulation of
his ‘fundamental ontology’, is the essentialist desire to uncover a time-
less, self-identical truth of Being residing beneath the flux of contingent
historical processes. Heidegger thus ‘refuses to reflect’ on the ‘power of
language’ to separate between ‘the expression and ‘the thing . . . in reflec-
tion; he halts after the first step of language-philosophical dialectics’
(Adorno, 1973, p. 111). In short, for Marxists like Adorno, the recourse
to ontological argument hypostasizes the heterogeneity of social reality,
abandons history, and is anti-dialectical. It substitutes paradox and play
for dialectical thought (Strathausen, 2006; 2009).
Even some who are sympathetic to poststructuralist ideas are dubious
about the recourse to ontology in social and political theory. For exam-
ple, in his thought-provoking book entitled Infinitely Demanding, Simon
Critchley questions the connection between ontology and politics. He
argues that ‘if we are doing politics, we cannot and should not pin our
hopes on any ontology, whether a Marxian notion of species-being, a
Spinozo-Deleuzianism of abundance, a Heideggero-Lacanianism of lack,
or any version of what Stephen White has called “weak ontology” in
politics’ (Critchley, 2007, p. 105). Instead, for Critchley, ‘politics is a dis-
ruption of the ontological domain and separate categories are required for
its analysis and practice. There is no transitivity between ontology and
politics’ (Critchley, 2007, p. 105. My emphasis). Yet it is not altogether
clear whether Critchley is questioning any putative connection between
ontology and politics, or whether he is advancing the weaker claim
that there is no predetermined or guaranteed path between ontology
and politics. Whatever the case, Critchley is wary of any easy connec-
tion between ontology and social and political theory, even though
questions of ontology permeate those theories he purports to endorse
(Critchley, 1992; 1998; 2004).
Other postmodernists and poststructuralists are equally scepti-
cal about the notion of ontology. For instance, Richard Rorty’s
90 Poststructuralism and After

interpretation of Heidegger and other poststructuralist thinkers like

Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Laclau, and Lyotard pours scorn on the
concept of ontology, and ontological problems and knowledge more
generally, as the latter constitute an unfortunate bit of metaphysical bag-
gage, which distracts us from the more important tasks of clarification
and edification. Rorty believes that only the latter can enhance our sense
of contingency about the various forms of life and the ‘final vocabular-
ies’ we carry around with us, thus amplifying our efforts to envisage and
bring about the project of ‘a social democratic utopia’ associated with
pragmatists like John Dewey, as well as the critical theory of Habermas,
rather than the metaphysical conceits and private fantasies propounded
by Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida. This, he argues, can lead to the
creation of better, more social democratic societies (e.g., Rorty, 1980;
1989, p. 73; 1991, pp. 27–49).
Nonetheless, despite this opposition, it would be wrong to think
that the positivist goal of a normal, value-free science of society has
been achieved. Nor should we assume that this goal is even attain-
able. Indeed, it is far from demonstrated that those who reject questions
of ontology do not themselves presuppose certain ontological assump-
tions about human beings and their social worlds, when they get down
to the business of conducting normal scientific research. On the con-
trary, a number of leading thinkers from various traditions of social
thought, ranging from structuration theory to critical realism, bemoan
the forgetting of ontology in contemporary social theory, whilst actively
embracing the ontological turn. For example, when articulating his
theory of structuration in the 1970s and 1980s, Anthony Giddens
opposed the priority of epistemology and methodology – questions of
‘knowing’ – at the expense of ontological reflection, which he associated
with questions of ‘being’ (Giddens, 1984, p. xx). Without, in his view,
clarifying the kinds of entities and objects that exist in the social world,
there is little to be gained in thinking about the conditions of possibility
for knowledge about that world, or in deciding about the correct way of
doing empirical research or choosing an appropriate research design.
In a similar vein, Roy Bhaskar’s project of critical realism is pred-
icated on the articulation of a ‘rich and complex ontology’ (Stones,
1996). The elaboration of this ontology underpins his efforts to shed
light on theoretical questions about the relationship between structure
and agency, social change, the role of ideology, and so forth, whilst
grounding attempts by him (and his followers) to develop guidelines
for concrete empirical research. In his view, any meaningful social sci-
ence presupposes that the world consists of ‘real things and structures’,
 Ontological Bearings 91

whose particular properties and causal mechanisms can be discovered

through empirical research. Particular empirical events and processes
can thus be explained by tracking the contingent interaction of vari-
ous generative mechanisms in specific contexts (Bhaskar, 1975; 1989;
1998). More recently, Colin Hay has developed the notion of a distinc-
tive political ontology, which can then inform a range of substantive
issues in social theory, such as the relationship between structure and
agency, the relationship between individuals and groups, and the inter-
play between material and ideational factors in social life (Hay, 2006).1
Colin Wight and others have also stressed the role of ontology in his
rethinking of international relations theory (e.g., Wight, 2006). In fact,
such has been the renewed interest in ontological issues amongst social
and political theorists that even some subscribers to the ontological turn
worry that the stick has been bent a little too far the other way, so that
issues of epistemology and methodology are now neglected in favour of
ontology (Stones, 2005, pp. 32–4).
Many poststructuralists most certainly endorse the ontological turn
in social and political theory. In fact, it is the commitment of various
thinkers to a common core of ontological presuppositions that defines
poststructuralism as a distinctive style of social theorizing. This means
that questions of knowledge, method, and research design require the
articulation and clarification of one’s ontological assumptions, and that
social research and its substantive outcomes depend upon a prior set of
ontological choices. Yet it would be wrong to assume that the concept of
ontology means the same thing for those who advocate an ‘ontological
turn’ in social theory, and it is certainly incorrect to assume that there
is full agreement about what kind of ontology they ought to embrace,
even if they do share a similar conception of ontology. These issues
can be brought into focus by comparing poststructuralism with ideal-
ist, realist, and (new) materialist approaches. In general, the concept of
ontology in philosophy is usually taken to be concerned with the nature
of existence – what exists? – whereas in the social sciences it is usu-
ally equated with questions relating to the nature of social existence:
What is social reality? What are human beings? What is the relation-
ship between social order and change? Consciously or unconsciously, a
research paradigm or programme invariably subscribes to a particular set
of ontological assumptions. One important dividing line in social theory
is between idealism and realism (though this division is often mislead-
ingly cast in terms of a difference between culturalism and materialism.)
Idealists assume that the external world is simply a realm of appearances
that has no existence independently of our activities, conceptions, and
92 Poststructuralism and After

reflective consciousness, whereas realists assume that natural and social

phenomena do exist independently of human subjects and their epis-
temic practices, thus providing the ultimate basis for knowledge claims
(Blaikie, 2007, p. 13).
Peter Winch’s classic book The Idea of a Social Science is often
taken as a paradigmatic expression of an idealist ontology. Drawing
on hermeneutics and the later Wittgenstein’s ordinary language phi-
losophy, he challenges naturalism and positivism in the name of a
distinctively social domain of objects and phenomena that he character-
izes as ‘rule-governed’ (Winch, 1990). As against approaches that reduce
the social world to natural processes, law-like regularities, or physical
dispositions, which are logically independent of human representations,
he argues that ‘[a] man’s social relations with his fellows are permeated
with his ideas about reality’; indeed, as he continues, ‘ “permeated” is
hardly a strong enough word: social relations are expressions of ideas about
reality’ (Winch, 1990, p. 23. My emphasis). Later in the book, he con-
cludes that ‘social relations really exist only in and through the ideas
which are current in society; or alternatively . . . social relations fall into
the same logical category as do relations between ideas’ (Winch, 1990,
p. 133). In short, though his position is more nuanced than these stark
formulations, it is evident that his approach to the study of society can
be viewed as a species of idealism.2
By contrast, Bhaskar’s critical realism is based on a depth realism, in
which reality comprises three levels – the empirical, the actual, and the
real – that are contingently related. In this model, the empirical refers
to our ‘lived experience’ of the world; the actual denotes the domain of
events occurring in the world; and the real picks out the underlying set
of objects and their properties that produce events. More fully, Bhaskar’s
research programme focusses on the deep set of structures, mechanisms,
and causal powers that generate events and our experiences of them,
where his aim is to explain the phenomena we encounter by reference
to the real domain. But though he subscribes to a species of naturalism
that accepts a unity of method amongst the natural and social sciences,
his research programme in the social sciences involves the articulation
of a distinctive conception of structure, agency, and power, as well as a
particular conception of social change, which I shall examine in more
detail in the next chapter.3
Winch’s idealism and Bhaskar’s realism do not, of course, exhaust the
ontological positions that are available to contemporary social theo-
rists. For example, Giddens’s theory of structuration is often construed
as a species of idealism, which foregrounds the ‘hermeneutic task of
 Ontological Bearings 93

penetrating the frames of meaning’ that lay actors use to constitute and
reproduce their social worlds. Yet equally, Giddens also subscribes to
a kind of subtle realism that accepts the existence of a structured real-
ity external to thought, though he acknowledges that our knowledge
of this reality is always mediated by certain theoretical and cultural
assumptions, which in turn casts doubt on the apodictic character of
the knowledge thus yielded (Giddens, 1976, pp. 163–70). Another con-
tending perspective is that of materialism, though the term covers a
wide range of competing approaches. Materialisms come in great many
sizes and shapes. For some, materialism is a further species of realism,
in which things are purported to exist in the world independently of
human consciousness. Others believe that realism is logically implied
by a materialist ontology, and they have concentrated their efforts on
developing the agentic capacities of various human and non-human
things (e.g., Bennett, 2010).
Poststructuralists tend to differentiate between radical materialism
and realism, in which they distinguish between a minimal form of
realism – the existence of things external to human consciousness – and
a more comprehensive account of realism, which attributes properties
and causal mechanisms to human and non-human objects irrespective
of our language and discourse. A spherical object such as a bundle of
newspapers held together by a string, or a piece of foam rubber, is a
thing that exists. But it is a ‘football’ in the context of a particular rule-
governed practice, such as playing football; in other words, its meaning
and significance is relative to a particular set of meaningful practices.
Indeed, it is worth reiterating that poststructuralists are in fact realists
both in the sense that they affirm the existence of a reality that is inde-
pendent of thought – that the world is not a product of our ideas and
language (i.e., if human beings were subtracted from the world tomor-
row, we would still have good reason to believe that other things such
as footballs would continue to exist) – but more importantly because of
its commitment to the view that our conceptions of things and entities
do not exhaust their meaning or being. In other words, the symbolic
orders in which we encounter things and objects are always vulnerable
to the effects of what Lacan calls ‘the Real’ – that which cannot be sym-
bolically represented, but which can dislocate – which can in certain
circumstances render visible the fact that objects contingent and unsta-
ble. Things can acquire different meanings and functions in different
historical contexts and situations, though this does not mean that they
do not exist, nor does it mean that we cannot say anything about these
things within certain relatively sedimented social contexts (Glynos and
94 Poststructuralism and After

Howarth, 2008). Poststructuralists like Laclau and Mouffe thus accept

the existence of things external to thought – a minimal realism – but
deny that our conceptual and discursive forms can ever exhaust the
objectivity and meaning of such things (Laclau and Mouffe, 1987).
Despite these differences, however, it is important to stress that
Winch, Bhaskar, Giddens, and materialists of various sorts are all pro-
ponents of the ‘ontological turn’ in social theory. Hence they reject the
‘epistemic fallacy’ of mainstream positivism, whose protagonists focus
exclusively on the logic of accessing and gaining knowledge about the
world without inquiring into the ultimate character of things, social rela-
tions, and processes. Nor do they accept method-driven approaches to
social science, which are mainly concerned with developing the correct
techniques of gathering and analysing empirical data, but do not seek
to elucidate the concepts and categories required to do so. In short, they
accept that epistemological and methodological questions presuppose
ontological inquiry.

The concept of ontology

Yet the crucial issue from a poststructuralist point of view is that none of
these distinctive ontological perspectives exhausts the concept of ontol-
ogy itself; neither do they unfold the richness of this strange idea,
which is simultaneously one of the most simple and complex notions in
Western philosophy. To explicate the concept, I begin with Heidegger’s
reflections, which arose initially from his radicalization of Husserl’s
phenomenological project. As Heidegger insists, the very notion of
ontology, whose origins can be traced back to classical Greek thought –
and the writings of Aristotle in particular – is at once ambiguous between
an interest in ‘what is’ and a concern with the ‘being’ of what is
(Heidegger, 1959, pp. 30–1). Indeed, in his later writings he questioned
the very idea of ontology – the study of being qua being – in the name
of a ‘history of being’, which was cautious about any theoretical attempt
to set out ultimate ontological grounds. In other words, for Heidegger,
though ontology is often construed as the ‘study of beings as such’, this
formulation immediately covers over the difference between the study
of particular things, such as political parties, numbers, certain sorts of
plants and animals, and so forth, on the one hand, and an inquiry
into the being of these entities on the other. But whilst Heidegger is
keen to acknowledge the rich diversity of things we encounter, a diver-
sity which cannot be reduced to a few basic philosophical categories,
such as the Kantian distinctions between noumena, phenomena, and
 Ontological Bearings 95

a transcendental subject, but is deserving instead of careful empirical

investigation and description, he is not just concerned with what is in
the world – a list of its furniture so to speak – but the different ways
things can be, as well as the fact that they are at all. These ontological
differences go to the heart of his philosophical project.
We thus need to dwell a little longer on the concept of ontology. One
way to provide a more complex understanding of being is to distinguish
between the ‘what-being’ and the ‘that-being’ of things. For instance,
Heidegger sometimes uses the term what-being in a predicative sense to
say what something is – for example, ‘men are rational’ or ‘I am hungry’–
thus distilling its ‘essence’, whereas that-being is used to refer to the fact
that something is or exists at all (Heidegger, 1982, p. 18). That-being
thus denotes the existence of something – the fact that something exists
at all – so that ontological inquiry is here directed at that which deter-
mines something as an existing thing, which is equally fundamental in
our practical and theoretical engagement with entities in the world. But
Heidegger even complicates this basic schema, for he also asserts that
ontological inquiry into the what-being of an object is also concerned
with that which determines what an object is; it should not just list
its taken-for-granted properties, which may after further reflection turn
out to be misleading. What is more, the essence of something is always
historical, and thus marked by contingency, so that its essence is never
fixed once and for all. Thirdly, ontological inquiry also focusses on a
thing’s particular way or mode of being, thus investigating how entities
are the way they are, and how they are distinguished from other kinds
of entities, thereby grounding the way in which we encounter objects
in our everyday lives and conduct our more theoretical investigations
of them (e.g., Heidegger, 1982, p. 88). For example, numbers have a
different mode of existence than human beings, who in turn have a
different mode of being than the tools they employ. Numbers, human
beings, and tools are not just different from each other, but they have
a different type of existence. Or, to use a Heideggerian distinction, if
we encounter something that is ‘present-at-hand’, then it differs from
something that is ‘ready-to-hand’: in the latter, we come across things
that are objects of use (such as books or hammers), rather than neutral
objects of inspection (Heidegger, 1962, pp. 95–102). Indeed, it is only
when our normal interactions with articles of use are disrupted that we
are confronted with how and that they are something; that they exist
at all. It is only when I can’t locate nails to hammer that they show
up or obtrude as objects (Inwood, 1999, pp. 128–9). Finally, Heidegger
sometimes distinguishes a thing’s ‘so-being’ (‘Sosein’) from its ‘that-’ or
96 Poststructuralism and After

‘what-being’. This mode is used to pick out the contingent, rather than
essential, features of a particular thing (Heidegger, 1962, p. 26; Inwood,
1999, p. 26). For example, one might say that the colour of a person’s
hair is a contingent feature, whereas a person’s capacity to reason or use
language is an essential component of him or her being a human. The
upshot of Heidegger’s complex investigation of the being of beings is a
concern both with Being as such, as well as the ‘many things’ which ‘we
designate as “being” ’, and the ‘various senses’ by which we do so. Not
only does he seek to clarify what something is, but he also explores that,
how and ‘so’ it is.
In short, then, for Heidegger the question of Being concerns ‘that
which determines entities as entities, that on the basis of which enti-
ties are already understood, however we may discuss them in detail’
(Heidegger, 1962, pp. 25–6). Yet he is equally critical of the mislead-
ing way in which philosophers distinguish between different sorts of
being in categorical and conceptual terms. For example, the distinction
in medieval thought between essence (essentia) and existence (existen-
tia) is often taken to approximate the distinction between what-being
and that-being. However, in Heidegger’s view, these categories are based
on certain theological assumptions, which he finds too blunt and ulti-
mately implausible in the wake of ‘the death of God’, while they also
fail to provide a convincing account of the distinctive being of human
beings, as the latter do not fall neatly into either of the two categories
(Mulhall, 2005, pp. 6–7). A human being, or Dasein (‘being-there’) as
Heidegger prefers to call it, has no essence or nature in the way that
other entities do. Instead, as he famously puts it, ‘The “essence” of Dasein
lies in its existence’, in which essence and existence are not separated in
this case, but overlap in important ways (Heidegger, 1962, p. 67).
The crucial conclusion that Heidegger draws in this regard is that
human beings are not reducible to a question of that-being – their mere
existence in a traditional sense – so that their being is no different from
other entities, whether they are stones, numbers, or giraffes, for this
conflates the categories of that-being and how-being. By contrast, in the
special case of human beings, the question of existence (or Existenz or
Ek-sistence as he sometimes terms it) concerns Dasein’s distinctive mode
of being. As Charles Taylor and others have suggested, one aspect of
this singular way of existing is evident in the fact that humans are ‘self-
interpreting animals’, who can reflect on their chosen identities and
evaluate their moral and ethical commitments (Taylor, 1985a; 1985b;
see also Glynos and Howarth, 2007). Yet the characteristic feature of
Dasein is not just its subjectivity or self-consciousness, for Heidegger
 Ontological Bearings 97

is equally critical of the tendency to reduce the basic structures and

capacities of human beings to this dimension alone.
As against naïve realists, materialists, or subjectivists, Heidegger high-
lights Dasein’s ‘thrown projection’ (Heidegger, 1962, pp. 182–8). This
means that the distinctive feature of Dasein’s existence is its ability to
‘stand outside’ itself, or to ‘stand forth’, as he puts it in his later ‘Letter
on Humanism’, in which he criticizes Sartre’s claim that existence pre-
cedes essence (Heidegger, 1993a). In other words, whilst human beings
are always thrown into a pre-existing world of practices and meanings,
they have the capacity to transcend their inherited identities and com-
mitments by choosing to actualize other available possibilities. Human
beings are thus internally connected to what they are not, that is, they
have the capacity to be simultaneously ahead, behind, and alongside
themselves. They also exhibit the capacity to go beyond their existing
orientations and situations, thereby highlighting the temporal quality
of Dasein’s thrown projection (Mulhall, 2005, p. 161).
In short, then, the essence of human existence does not comprise a
list of positive properties – an essence – which can be deduced from
its particular species and genus, as might be the case for other entities
(a thing’s what-being). Rather, because the issue of Being is always a
question for Dasein, and because it has the capacity to choose how it is
to live its life – literally who it is and who it will become – the essence
of Dasein is defined and constituted by its existence (Mulhall, 2001,
p. 205). A human being is not just another entity in the world – a ‘what’
or a thing whose properties can be fixed by its nature or essence – but
a ‘who’ that can choose to live its life in different ways. What is more,
with respect to its contingent existence, Dasein can live such a life with
differing degrees of authenticity. Heidegger captures this insight by dis-
tinguishing between the particular form of existence chosen by Dasein,
which he calls its ‘existentiell’ understanding of Being, and ‘the struc-
tural conditions for the possibility of such enactments’, which he names
the ‘existential analytic of Dasein’ (Heidegger, 1962, p. 34; Mulhall, 2001,
p. 205). The latter analytic is designed to articulate the basic structures,
capacities, and potentialities of Dasein.
Heidegger’s focus on what he calls the ‘ontological difference’ – the
difference between Being and beings in its various manifestations – is
often bracketed by social theorists, who prefer to distinguish between
‘philosophical’ and ‘regional/special’ ontology, after which they concen-
trate their attention on the latter (e.g., Benton and Craib, 2001, p. 5).
In other words, social theorists claim not to be interested in general
questions about the nature of existence as such, but in the particular
98 Poststructuralism and After

kinds of things and their properties that exist in specific fields of inquiry,
such as economics, sociology, or political science, or which are present
in particular conjunctures. Such inquiry does tend to go beyond the
purely empirical study of a particular domain of objects, or the anal-
ysis of a specific event – the gathering and analysis of various facts
about an entity – which Heidegger gathers under the heading of ‘ontical
research’, to investigate the categories and concepts presupposed by such
an investigation. Heidegger calls the latter ‘ontological research’.
Yet such inquiry for Heidegger is simply not radical enough in its
questioning, for it fails to address questions of fundamental ontology. For
example, early on in Being and Time, he argues that

Ontological inquiry is indeed more primordial, as over against the

ontical inquiry of the positive sciences. But it remains itself naïve
and opaque if in its researches into the Being of entities it fails to
discuss the meaning of Being in general. And even the ontological
task of constructing a non-deductive genealogy of the different pos-
sible ways of Being requires that we first come to an understanding
of ‘what we really mean by this expression “Being” ’.
(Heidegger, 1962, p. 31)

In other words, ontological inquiry must not only investigate the con-
ditions of any particular ontical science to clarify its basic concepts, but
it must also investigate the conditions of possibility of the ontological
conditions themselves (Mulhall, 2001, p. 203).

From ‘Dasein’ to the ‘history of being’

Such then is the terrain of fundamental ontology for Heidegger. But

as I have already intimated, this terrain can only be explored by first
investigating the basic structures and dispositions of Dasein. In fact, it
is precisely because of Dasein’s special character that Heidegger accords
it an exemplary role in investigating the question of being (Seinsfrage),
for it is only this entity, ‘in its very Being’, for which ‘Being is an issue’
(Heidegger, 1962, p. 32). This priority is manifest in three important
ways. The first is ontical, as every form of identity adopted by Dasein –
each of its existentiell states so to speak – exhibits a relationship to
its own Being. In other words, in choosing a particular way of living,
Dasein necessarily raises critical questions about its own existence. The
second is ontological because in posing questions about its own exis-
tence Dasein renders more explicit its implicit understanding of Being.
 Ontological Bearings 99

Each Dasein, therefore, possesses what Heidegger calls a ‘preontological’

understanding of its Being. Finally, Dasein’s various encounters with
other entities also make possible an understanding of their Being. Dasein
thus provides ‘the ontico-ontological condition for the possibility of any
ontologies’ (Heidegger, 1962, p. 34).
Radicalizing Husserl’s philosophical project, Heidegger begins by
endorsing the central phenomenological concept of intentionality, in
which the essential structure of mental experience consists of ‘directing
itself towards’ objects. But he adds the claim that this presupposes a set
of categories – ‘existentials’ or existentialia as he calls them – which exists
in Dasein’s factical life and which requires a corresponding form of prac-
tical or hermeneutical insight by Dasein for its proper application and
use (Critchley, 2000, pp. 202–4; Heidegger, 1962, p. 70). Nevertheless,
the insinuation of a concretely located Dasein as the object of phe-
nomenological description merely prepares the ground for Heidegger’s
overall project, as the description of Dasein in its ‘everdayness’ – the
way human beings apprehend things they encounter in the world –
is complicit with the concealed and sedimented conceptions of our
metaphysical tradition. Instead, he transforms our understandings of
subject and object by rethinking Husserl’s account of ‘the natural atti-
tude’ (Husserl, 1977, p. 20). By the latter, Husserl means our ordinary
assumptions about the world: our belief, for instance, that the tree we
see in everyday experience actually exists in the world independently of
our particular perceptions of it (Hammond et al., 1991, p. 26).
Heidegger’s objection centres on the kind of being already attributed
to the world of things so perceived, namely, that they are experienced as
‘present-at-hand’ (vorhanden), that is to say, as objects of theoretical con-
templation, which are external to a comprehending human conscious-
ness. His ‘hermeneutics of facticity’ re-describes the natural attitude by
stressing Dasein’s ‘thrownness’ into a world of objects and practices
equipped with an acquired set of practical dispositions. Our condition
of ‘being in the world’ means that our primary encounter with objects
is one of their ‘readiness-to-hand’ (zuhandenheit), in which we relate to
things as a handy set of tools employed to achieve our purposes and
projects, rather than objects of theoretical inspection. Heidegger also
rejects the Husserlian conception of subjectivity, in which ‘an object
objectified into an ego’ confronts a separate and fixed set of things
(Critchley, 2000, p. 108). His phenomenological re-description rejects
the picture that human beings are simply one kind of entity amongst
others (another ‘what’). Instead, human beings are composed of an infi-
nite set of contingent possibilities (an incomplete ‘who’) and are not
100 Poststructuralism and After

only endowed with the capacity to choose their projects but are also
able to transform their identities in the process of choosing.
Much of Being and Time thus interrogates and elucidates Dasein’s com-
portments with other kinds of entities, and with other human beings, so
as to provide a phenomenological account of this special entity. In Divi-
sion I of the book, Heidegger investigates Dasein’s so-called ‘being-in-
the-world’ in terms of its ‘average everydayness’ (Heidegger, 1962, p. 38),
that is, by describing the ordinary activities and interactions of Dasein
without grounding such practices upon some underlying theoretical
consciousness or subjective reasoning, and without separating mental
processes and experiences from the world of things and other bodies
(Dreyfus, 1991, pp. 58–9). This initial account of Dasein’s being-in-the-
world is important in ridding us of misleading pictures of human exis-
tence. It problematizes those philosophical accounts in which human
beings are assumed to encounter things and people mainly as knowers
or theoretical reasoners, rather than doers and practical beings. But it
is important to stress that this portrait is severely lacking, for Dasein’s
everyday comportments and encounters are loaded with inauthenticity,
in that Dasein inevitably falls prey to what Heidegger calls ‘the They’ –
‘the “nobody” to whom every Dasein has already surrendered itself in
Being-among-one-another’ (Heidegger, 1962, p. 166) – and thus experi-
ences anxiety (angst). Hence Division II of Being and Time uses human
experiences and moods like anxiety as a catapult to explore Dasein’s rela-
tion to its own end – a search for authenticity – and then with respect
to certain limit situations such as time and death, when the question
of Being as an issue for Dasein is posed with starkness. Yet authenticity
in this conception does not equal completion and reconciliation, but
coming to terms with Dasein’s finitude, that is, its non-self-identity.
In his later writings, the ontological difference between Being and
beings is historicized, for Heidegger situates Dasein in a broader context
and then presents us with a history of Being. Here the different epochs
of Being become the frames or spaces which make beings intelligible.
For example, as Heidegger puts it in ‘The Age of the World Picture’, the
understanding of Being in modernity is exhausted by the notions of
representation and ‘picturing’:

What is, in its entirety, is now taken in such a way that it only is in
being to the extent that it is set up by man, who represents and sets
forth. The being of whatever is, is sought and found in the represent-
edness of the latter . . . The fact that whatever is comes into being in
and through representedness transforms the age in which this occurs
 Ontological Bearings 101

into a new age in contrast with the preceding one . . . [T]he fact that
the world becomes picture at all is what distinguishes the essence of
the modern age.
(Heidegger, 1977, pp. 129–30)

In this regard, there are important parallels between Heidegger and

Foucault. For example, Foucault’s notion of an episteme replicates some-
thing of Heidegger’s approach in developing his archaeology of various
Western orders of knowledge. Thus, in the Order of Things, Foucault
argues that in ‘any given culture and at any given moment, there is
only one episteme that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowl-
edge whether expressed in a theory or silently invested in a practice’
(Foucault, 1970, p. 168).

Social ontology

For many poststructuralists, Heidegger’s profound reflections about

ontology are pivotal in shifting attention away from the metaphysical
foundations of knowledge to the paradoxes of ontological difference, as
well as the play between the fullness and incompletion of identity. Yet
a doubt still remains about whether or not the question of being really
matters for social and political theory and about how it matters. A central
claim of this chapter is that it is essential to explore this issue because
(as Heidegger suggests) fundamental ontology necessarily informs any
regional ontology. It does so by serving to clarify the nature of beings
and by providing the requisite ontological depth of any theoretical
grammar. Here, it is possible to adduce negative and positive reasons
for believing so. On the negative side, Heidegger’s account of ontology
raises deep questions about traditional ways of conducting social the-
ory and inquiry. The positivist desire to bracket ontological questions
of both a regional and fundamental type is challenged by Heidegger, as
are projects to provide transcendental grounds for social and political
theory. Any study of beings, including human beings, presupposes an
investigation of Being, and any investigation of human beings is simul-
taneously an investigation of the investigator, that is, a situated human
being, who investigates.
On a more positive note, his concern with language, meaning, dis-
course, and interpretation have been developed by various hermeneuti-
cists and poststructuralists into alternative methods of social inquiry.
By distinguishing the ontological and ontical domains of social
and philosophical inquiry, Heidegger also furnishes a language for
102 Poststructuralism and After

linking ontological questions to empirical research, whilst providing

an illuminating series of reflections on the key concepts of space,
time, meaning, moods, human subjectivity, and ethics. Yet this does
not constitute a fully fledged social and political theory. Like Derrida’s
reflections on language, or better still his insight that language cannot
perform the task of transparently representing the world of things in a
metaphysical fashion, these operations do not result in a properly artic-
ulated social ontology. Instead, the movement from Heidegger’s critique
of ontology and Derrida’s reflections on signs and writing to social and
political theory has to be carefully articulated.
It has become clear in recent times – ever since the linguistic turn
in fact – that the importance of ontology and language for social and
political theory admits various possibilities. In fact, there are at least five
paths from the concern with language and ontology to social theory.
Some employ the resources of human reason and rationality, which are
embedded in human communication and dialogue, to develop social
theory; others focus on the constitutive presence of meanings and inter-
pretation in human life; a third group is concerned with the role of
meaningful practices; another strand of theory invokes a re-animated
conception of matter and the self-organizing properties of complex sys-
tems to elaborate post-humanist critical theory; and a final school of
theorists derive their approach from the relations and oppositions that
compose linguistic structures.

Reason and rationality

Perhaps the most ambitious attempt in recent times to construct a com-
prehensive social theory based on a theory of language, which also
involves weighty normative and critical implications, is evident in the
work of Jürgen Habermas. As I noted in Chapter 2, he has developed a
theory of communication action and a discourse ethics that arises from
what he terms a ‘universal pragmatics’. Drawing initially on the first
generation of critical theorists such as Adorno and Horkheimer, whilst
developing elements of Husserl’s phenomenological project, especially
the latter’s idea of a detached theoretical interest that guides philosoph-
ical reflection, Habermas’s early efforts to develop an epistemologically
orientated critique and reconstruction of social theory was grounded
on the idea of ‘knowledge-constitutive interests’. In this articulation
of critical theory, different types of knowledge were linked to partic-
ular sorts of interests – a technical interest that is founded in material
needs and labour, control of the material environment, and empirical
analytical science; a practical interest that is grounded on the mutual
 Ontological Bearings 103

communicative understanding between individuals and groups, which

Habermas calls historical-hermeneutic knowledge; and an emancipa-
tory interest which is based on the desire to transcend the distorted
utterances and manipulative actions associated with various forms of
domination – so that the task of critical theory was to ensure the proper
relationships between different configurations of knowledge and inter-
ests, whilst also providing the resources to criticize various forms of
domination, especially the hegemony of instrumental reason, in the
name of human emancipation (Habermas, 1978).
In his later writings, Habermas draws upon J. L. Austin and prag-
matists like Peirce to rethink important elements of social theory and
political philosophy. He elaborates a notion of ‘discourse ethics’ that
arises from his overall social theory, especially his account of language.
In this conception, linguistic meaning depends on the presence of other
language users – a state of ‘intersubjectivity’ – whilst the truth of state-
ments depends on the potential agreement of those with whom one
discusses. In so doing, Habermas proposes an ‘ideal speech situation’
to determine the validity, and thus acceptability, of our utterances and
proposals. The procedure requires participants to be sincere in reason-
ing towards the best argument, whilst including all those affected by
the decision. If this is approximated, then an agreement or rational con-
sensus on ‘the force of the better argument’ can be expected. In this
context, discourse ethics is a form of normative reasoning, compris-
ing the argumentative rules that social actors must accept if they are to
argue reasonably for the claims they propose to validate. So conceived,
Habermas’s theory of discourse assumes a central role in resolving con-
flicts and disagreements that emerge between asymmetrically positioned
actors in the modern social world.
At least since the writing of Legitimation Crisis, then, Habermas has
endeavoured to marry a sociological narrative about the contradictions
and crisis tendencies of organized capitalism with his novel conception
of public morality (Habermas, 1976). Stressing the idea of truth as a kind
of agreement that a community of language users would reach when,
and only when, they are able to conduct their exchanges in confor-
mity with the presuppositions of communicative rationality, Habermas
claims to unite the rationality of scientific inquiry with the rationality of
normative agreement by invoking ideas of ‘generalizable interests’ and
‘maxims of universalizability’ (Habermas, 1976, pp. 108–9).
Following Weber, this approach is based on the idea that modernity has
instigated a fundamental ‘disenchantment of the world’, in which per-
sons can no longer rely upon their already existing conceptions of the
104 Poststructuralism and After

good life, whether these conceptions arise from individuals or from the
communities in which they live. Because individuals and communities
are not governed by standards that are derived from custom and tradi-
tion, they have more and more to reason and reflect about the principles
by which they are to live (Weale, 2007, p. 86). So Habermas asks:

In which direction would the structures of the life-world have to vary

if the undistorted reproduction of a concrete form of life were to be
less and less guaranteed by traditional, customary, time-tested, and
consensual stocks of knowledge and had to be secured instead by a
risky search for consensus, that is, by the cooperative achievements
of those engaged in communicative action themselves?
(Habermas, 1987, p. 344, cited in Weale, 2007, p. 86)

In answering this question, Habermas constrains normative reasoning

with a universalizability test that leads him to claim that a ‘norm is
just only if all can will that it be obeyed by each in comparable sit-
uations’ (Habermas, 1996, p. 161, cited in Weale, 2007, p. 87). In the
same way that truth for Habermas is justified by the assent of an assem-
bly of rational minds, so he argues that norms are validated by that
which is consistently and universally willed. In short, in the forging of
collective choices and binding norms, as Weale neatly encapsulates it,
citizens ‘have to appeal to the results of a social dialogue, constrained
only by the requirements that the participants to the dialogue can enter
it freely and that the process of collective will formation is uncoerced
and undistorted. Whatever emerges from this dialogue will then count
as constitutive of human interests’ (Weale, 2007, p. 87). Democracy and
justice can thus be vindicated and justified.
According to Habermas, social and political conflicts arise because
different systems of instrumental action, such as the market and the
bureaucratic capitalist state, clash with and seek to ‘colonize’ the social
lifeworld, where agents interact and relate to each on the basis of
communicative, rather than instrumental, action. Yet he also claims
that his concept of ‘discourse ethics’ enables a legitimate and demo-
cratic resolution of such contestation. Habermas’s political theory is
thus closely connected to his account of ethics, for the latter comprises a
commitment to the ideals of inclusiveness, equality, and universal soli-
darity, which are implicit in discourse and ordinary language use. In this
vein, Habermas’s approach has been used to develop deliberative mod-
els of democracy and discursive accounts of public policymaking and
representation.
 Ontological Bearings 105

But Habermas’s highly complex research programme is at odds with

other hermeneutical, critical, and poststructuralist approaches, which
have tended to reject or moderate his overly rationalistic programme
that is orientated around the production of a ‘rational consensus’
in our increasingly diverse and heterogeneous societies. At the same
time, many poststructuralists and hermeneuticists are wary of his
growing normative emphasis on the evaluation and justification of
moral norms and values. In fact, it appears that Habermas’s engage-
ment with hermeneutics and poststructuralism is mainly to criticize
their implicit or overt conservatism, whilst challenging the way in
which postmodernists (like Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard) and their
philosophical antecedents (such as Nietzsche and Heidegger) allegedly
sacrifice truth to meaning and power (e.g., Habermas, 1987).

Meanings and self-understandings

Less rationalistic and normative endeavours to connect language and
social theory are evident in various hermeneutical and poststructuralist
accounts. A first approach takes its lead from the idea that language
is a constitutive feature of human beings, and thus central to explain-
ing the meanings and practices of the worlds they inhabit. A principal
source of this tradition is the early Heidegger’s existential critique of
Husserlian phenomenology. When, for example, Heidegger claims that
‘ “to speak” . . . is what basically constitutes human Dasein’, he not only
stresses the central role of language in characterizing human beings, but
he also emphasizes the way in which our discursive articulations enable
human beings to disclose the particular things they encounter in the
world, and indeed the very being of these beings. Language thus pro-
vides a necessary, perhaps essential, inroad into our understanding of
human beings and the meanings of their practices (Heidegger, 1997,
pp. 17–8).
A range of phenomenologists and hermeneuticists, such as Alfred
Schutz, Charles Taylor, Paul Ricoeur, and Michael Walzer, have used
these insights to develop distinctively interpretivist approaches to social
and political theory. Eschewing the rationalist path of standing above or
outside the worlds of meanings within which human subjects live, they
presume that theory and philosophy begins (and ends) with subjects
that inhabit worlds of social meanings. I have already noted that Charles
Taylor talks of man as a ‘self-interpreting animal’ and then develops an
expressivist model of language to understand and evaluate their mean-
ings and practices. Meanings are thus constitutive of human actions
and social practices, as well as the objects they encounter in various
106 Poststructuralism and After

contexts, and these elements are embedded in wider frameworks and

social imaginaries (Taylor, 2004; 2007).
In a similar fashion, Michael Walzer bases his critique of rationalist
and positivist perspectives by articulating the idea of human beings
as meaning-producing creatures. Walzer’s ontology gives rise to two
contrasting pictures of doing social theory. As he puts it,

One way to begin the philosophical enterprise – perhaps the original

way – is to walk out of the cave, leave the city, climb the moun-
tain, fashion for oneself (what can never be fashioned by ordinary
men and women) an objective and universal standpoint. Then one
describes the terrain of everyday life from far away so that it loses
its particular contours and takes on a general shape. But I mean to
stand in the cave, in the city, on the ground. Another way of doing
political philosophy is to interpret to one’s fellow citizens the world
of meanings that we share.
(Walzer, 1983, p. xiv)

Social theory is thus understood as the practice of interpreting the

self-interpretations of actors in particular contexts and situations. But
whilst interpretivists offer important resources for social theory, their
programme tends to be radically insufficient to the task. Legitimate
questions are raised about the explanatory capacity of hermeneutical
accounts, coupled with their ability to capture logics and mechanisms
that are not necessarily available to actors themselves (e.g., Glynos and
Howarth, 2007).

Practices
A third passage from the study of language to the construction of social
theory is via the concept of practice, though here again there are various
ways of fleshing out this option. As I have just noted, the later Habermas
takes his lead from Austin’s theory of speech acts and pragmatist philos-
ophy to elaborate a theory of communicative practice that can clarify
and evaluate our broader social practices and institutions. But explicit
versions of practice theory have emerged more recently, building upon
the idea that ‘practices are the site where understanding is structured
and intelligibility articulated’ (Schatzki, 1996, p. 12). Understood in this
way, practice theory includes theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony
Giddens, and Theodore Schatzki, as well as postmodernists like Jean-
Francois Lyotard, poststructuralists such as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal
Mouffe, and a host of theorists in public policy and policy analysis
 Ontological Bearings 107

(e.g., Freeman and Maybin, 2011; Schön and Rein, 1994; Wagenaar,
2004; 2011).
The development of Bourdieu’s pioneering ethnographical and
anthropological research into a fully fledged theory of practice provides
an exemplary instance of this approach. His social theory is predi-
cated on what he terms a ‘logic of practice’, which highlights the role
of human bodily practices and acquired dispositions within the social
world (Bourdieu, 1977). Pitted against rationalism and other intellectu-
alist traditions of social theory, he argues that various mechanisms of
social domination and reproduction are concentrated on bodily ‘know-
how’, rather than an emphasis on ‘knowing that’ (Ryle, 1949). They are
also the product of competent practices in the social world, in which
practices are embodied and internalized through socialization (Wolfreys,
2000).
Not unlike meaning-based accounts, Bourdieu’s practice theory also
shares a family resemblance with Heidegger’s account of ontology.
I have already noted that in the latter’s conception of ontology human
beings embody a particular understanding of their being, which they
seek to interpret and possibly alter in the light of their ongoing comport-
ments and engagements; our social practices thus contain and exhibit
an ontology (Dreyfus, 1991, p. 16). Bourdieu argues that the produc-
tion of these particular understandings of being is the result of our
socialization into practices, which are not exhaustively contained and
transmitted in the mental representations of individuals. In his words,

A whole group and a whole symbolically structured environ-

ment . . . exerts an anonymous, pervasive pedagogic action . . . The
essential part of the modus operandi which defines practical mas-
tery is transmitted in practice, in its practical state, without attaining
the level of discourse. The child imitates not ‘models’ but other peo-
ple’s actions. Body hexis speaks directly to the motor function, in the
form of a pattern of postures that is both individual and systematic,
because linked to a whole system of techniques involving the body
and tools, and charged with a host of social meanings and values:
in all societies, children are particularly attentive to the gestures and
postures which, in their eyes, express everything that goes to make
an accomplished adult – a way of walking, a tilt of the head, facial
expressions, ways of sitting and of using implements, always asso-
ciated with a tone of voice, a style of speech, and (how could it be
otherwise?) a certain subjective experience.
(Bourdieu, 1977, p. 87, cited in Dreyfus, 1991, p. 17)
108 Poststructuralism and After

Practices are, therefore, self-perpetuating, and they are produced by the

dispositions that human beings acquire in particular social fields and in
the space of specific groups, such as a social class, which are defined in
terms of the availability and use of different sorts of capital.
Bourdieu thus challenges perspectives like rational choice theory,
which he believes are grounded on a fundamental misunderstanding
of the character of social agents and the way they actually operate in
the social world. Whereas social agents in rational choice theory are
assumed to make rational choices between particular courses of action
or goods based on their desire to maximize their narrow self-interest,
which in turn presuppose explicitly available rational and economic
criteria, in Bourdieu’s model the activities of social agents exhibit an
implicit practical logic – a ‘practical sense’ – as well as internalized bod-
ily dispositions. Social agents act according to their ‘feel for the game’,
in which the ‘feel’ is roughly equated to his concept of ‘habitus’, and his
idea of ‘game’ refers to his concept of ‘field’ (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 95).4
Poststructuralists like Michel Foucault take a different tack by endeav-
ouring to describe the changing configurations of linguistic and non-
linguistic practices in various historical orders or ‘epistemes’ (as he
sometimes calls them) (Foucault, 1970). Foucault thus seeks to develop
an approach to the study of human beings and social relations, which
can avoid the problems of rationalism, hermeneutics, and structuralism,
by focussing on the contingent and changing horizons of discursive
practice that shape social and political identities. The latter also pro-
vide the criteria with which to characterize practices and institutions,
and (especially in his later writings) to evaluate and criticize social
practices. However, as I shall discuss in more detail in Chapter 6, he
elaborates different and sometimes competing conceptions of discourse
that ultimately remain ambiguous and paradoxical (Howarth, 2000a).

Matter, agency, and complex systems

Another route from ontology to social theory is evident amongst those
who focus on the importance of ‘things’, ‘vibrant matter’, ‘immanent
reality’, and ‘partially self-organizing systems’, especially the way these
various objects exhibit differential degrees of agency and causal power.
Many of these themes have been highlighted and engaged with by a
loose assemblage of scholars who call themselves the ‘new materialists’
(Coole and Frost, 2010). Theorists like Jane Bennett, William Connolly,
Diana Coole, Samantha Frost, and Noortje Marres (to name but a few)
have drawn upon contemporary developments in the natural sciences –
complexity theory, biology, neuroscience, geology, climatology, and so
 Ontological Bearings 109

forth – as well as philosophers such as Lucretius, Spinoza, Nietzsche,

Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari, not to mention dialectical materialists
like Althusser, to rethink questions about matter, the body, biopolitics,
bioethics, global political economy, affect, and governmentality, as well
to rethink classical thinkers like Hobbes and Descartes. Such theorists
share an important family resemblance with actor-network theory as
developed by philosophers and sociologists like Michel Callon, Bruno
Latour, John Law, and Annemarie Mol.
In part, this ‘new materialism’, as it is sometimes named, constitutes a
reaction against previous preoccupations with the role of language, dis-
course, and symbolic systems in developing critical theory in the social
sciences. Indeed, the emergence of this approach stands at the inter-
section of a paradoxical convergence in contemporary social theory.
On the one hand, some ‘hard’ political economists and critical realists
are endeavouring to integrate cultural, semiotic, and subjective dimen-
sions into their accounts of phenomena. Theorists like Bob Jessop and
Ngai-Ling Sum, for example, have developed a cultural political econ-
omy that articulates critical discourse analysis, French regulation theory,
and neo-Marxist state theory. They have used this approach to chart
various pathways from Fordist to post-Fordist social formations (Jessop,
2002a; 2004a; Jessop and Sum, 2006). At the same time, scholars like
Vivien Schmidt have advanced a project for discursive institutionalism
to account for institutional and policy change, whilst theorists of inter-
national relations have made a plea for social constructivism in the field
of international relations (e.g., Wendt, 1999). These developments go
hand in hand with the way that poststructuralists have problematized
the foundational or essentialist status of concepts like the sign, repre-
sentation, speech, essence, origin, nature, and reason in different fields
or shown their dependence on excluded elements that are foreclosed by
the operation of these categories.
Yet, on the other hand, a number of erstwhile cultural theo-
rists, strongly influenced by the linguistic turn, have noted a neglect
of ‘the economy’ (e.g., Mitchell, 2002a), ‘vibrant matter’ (e.g., Bennett,
2007), ‘nature’, or ‘processes of materialization’ (e.g., Coole and Frost,
2010). For example, in their recent introduction to a volume entitled
New Materialisms, which in many ways functions as a manifesto for these
new developments, Diana Coole and Samantha Frost draw attention to
three main elements of this new perspective. They speak, first, of a post-
humanist ‘ontological reorientation’ that ‘conceives of matter itself as
lively or as exhibiting agency’, and which is informed by and resonates
with ‘various developments in natural science’. They argue, secondly,
110 Poststructuralism and After

that this re-orientation ‘entails consideration of a raft of biopolitical

and bioethical issues concerning the status of life and of the human’.
Thirdly, they claim that this ‘new materialist scholarship testifies to a
critical and non-dogmatic re-engagement with political economy, where
the nature of and relationship between the material details of every-
day life and broader geopolitical and socio-economic structures is being
explored afresh’ (Coole and Frost, 2010, pp. 2–3).
A common theme that runs through these three aspects of the new
materialism is the emphasis on ‘materialization as a complex, pluralistic,
[and] relatively open process’, coupled with an insistence that ‘humans,
including theorists themselves, be recognized as thoroughly immersed
within materiality’s productive contingencies’ (Coole and Frost, 2010,
p. 7). Drawing an explicit contrast with various forms of cultural the-
ory, as well as ‘fashionable constructivist approaches’, new materialists
stress ‘the productivity and resilience of matter’ (Coole and Frost, 2010,
p. 7). Their wager is to give materiality its due, alert to the myriad
ways in which matter is both self-constituting and invested with – and
reconfigured by – intersubjective interventions that have their own quo-
tient of materiality. In short, in opposition to various sorts of radical
constructivism, deconstruction, and textual analysis, Coole and Frost

interpret . . . insistent demands for more materialist modes of analysis

and for new ways of thinking about matter and processes of materi-
alization . . . as signs that the more textual approaches associated with
the so-called cultural turn are increasingly being deemed inadequate
for understanding contemporary society, particularly in light of some
of its most urgent challenges regarding environmental, demographic,
geopolitical and economic change.
(Coole and Frost, 2010, pp. 2–3)

Key new materialist themes are evident in William Connolly’s affirma-

tion of immanent naturalism or immanent realism, which is partly
developed in opposition to ‘cultural theory’ (Connolly, 2010; 2012).
Like his reworking of immanence and transcendence, Connolly refuses
a problematic separation of nature and culture in favour of the complex
and uneven inter-fusion of culture and nature. His stress, for example,
on affects, passions, corporeal dispositions, and the multiple circuits and
relays of the various regions of the brain system, is designed to challenge
a ‘mechanical determinism’, which is based on the search for law-like
explanations, as well as a ‘bland intellectualism’ that omits the ‘affective
 Ontological Bearings 111

sources, somatic entanglements, and effects’ of thinking and cognition

(Connolly, 2002a, pp. 1, 64).
The emphasis on emotions and the ‘visceral register’ is thus directed
at the overly rationalistic and instrumental explanations of mainstream
social science, whose explanations and predictions are usually couched
in terms of material interests, subjective preferences, or disembod-
ied behaviour. Indeed, a paradigm case of the ‘volatile character’ of
this ‘immanent field of matter-energy’ is the human self, which is
re-configured as the ‘human body/brain system’ prior to its cultural
immersion (Connolly, 2004a, p. 342). This results in a layered and
embodied conception of the self that is relationally immersed in various
worlds of cultural meaning – a complex and unevenly articulated series
of ‘mind/brain/cultural complexes’ – whose multiple relays between
consciousness and the unconscious, affect and intellect, technique and
sensibility, the visceral and the refined, defy programmes of reduc-
tion, subsumptive explanation, and depth hermeneutics (Connolly,
2002a, p. 90). In short, the various ‘layers of the body/brain network’
(Connolly, 2002b, p. xvii), and their insertion in meaningful practices,
are ‘traversed by surplus energies, unstable mixtures, and static that
might, given an unexpected shift in circumstances, issue in something
new and surprising’ (Connolly, 2004a, p. 342).
In his most recent book, A World of Becoming, Connolly positions this
re-fashioned conception of the human self – this complex and unevenly
articulated series of ‘mind/brain/cultural complexes’ – ‘in a world of
multiple, interacting open systems of different viscosity morphing at
different speeds’ (Connolly, 2010, p. 39). Profiting from recent advances
in evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and complexity theory, as well as
geology, ecology, and climatology, Connolly stresses that these partially
self-organizing systems ‘periodically interact in ways that can accelerate,
amplify, or destabilize one another’, thus disrupting our settled concep-
tions of space and time (Connolly, 2010, p. 37). He also emphasizes the
importance of ‘time as becoming’, which is predicated on the idea of ‘an
open temporal dimension’ in the universe that exceeds ‘human mas-
tery’, thus introducing uncertainty and potentiality (Connolly, 2010,
pp. 70–1).
In developing this position, Connolly criticizes certain sorts of
hermeneutics, discourse analysis, and cultural theory for their tendency
to reduce social phenomena to linguistic representations and symbolic
forms. His newly forged philosophy of ‘immanent realism’ is evident in
a recent discussion of neoliberalism, where he questions the assump-
tion that ‘cultural theory can concentrate its attention on the internal
112 Poststructuralism and After

dynamics of social and cultural formations . . . or in the assumption that

capitalism constitutes a closed system that automatically absorbs the dis-
senting pressures applied to it and brings them back as new pressures to
expansion’ (Connolly, 2012). More concretely, drawing inspiration from
Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, and recent advances in complexity the-
ory, neoliberalism is understood as ‘a socio-economic philosophy’ that
‘expresses inordinate confidence in the unique, self-regulating power of
markets as it links the priority of the individual to markets’ (Connolly,
2012).

Structures
A fifth path from language and ontology to social theory is taken by
those who draw upon Saussure’s original linguistic model, especially his
claim that the structuring of signs arises from the interplay between
the syntagmatic and paradigmatic poles of language. By focussing on
the interacting logics of combination and substitution – the syntactical
sequencing of words in sentences and discourses, on the one hand, and
the replacement of particular words in such sequences on the other –
structuralists and poststructuralists seek to uncover the underlying sets
of rules and logics that make possible the particular meanings and prac-
tices that are encountered at the surface level of the social world. The
structuralist model of analysis thus questions a focus that restricts itself
to the role of meanings and practices in society by positing a classical
system of oppositions – appearance/reality, conscious/unconscious, phe-
nomenal/essential – where the latter are given an explanatory privilege
over the former.
I have already discussed the ways in which anthropologists like
Claude Lévi-Strauss have employed this model to rethink the logic of
the human and social sciences. An ontology composed of differential
structures and binary oppositions also informs the Althusserian school
of Marxism. For example, Althusser proposed to break with the expres-
sivism of Hegelian Marxism by adopting the structuralist notion that
social formations are decentred structures – systems of related elements –
which are not based on any human essence or law of history (Althusser,
1969, pp. 89–128, 161–218). Instead, he argued that historical societies
are made up of a complex system of levels and instances, which are
linked together into various ‘structures in dominance’ (Althusser, 1969,
pp. 204–7). Each concrete society can thus be understood in terms of the
interweaving of economic, political, ideological, and theoretical levels,
and each of these regions can be further broken down into their con-
stituent parts. Each element exhibits its own relative autonomy, where
 Ontological Bearings 113

the economic level only determines ‘in the last instance’ (Althusser,
1969, pp. 117–8, 121–3; Althusser and Balibar, 1970).
Also in the domain of social and political theory, Ernesto Laclau and
Chantal Mouffe have employed structuralist methodology to account
for the political structuring of social relations via what they call the log-
ics of equivalence and difference, though their application is defined
within a poststructuralist framework (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). The
logic of equivalence is related to the paradigmatic pole of language and
thus involves the metaphorical substitution of one term for another.
Laclau and Mouffe employ this logic to explain the construction of
social antagonisms whereby an Other is constructed as blocking the
identity of a self. The construction of an antagonism involves the pro-
duction of political frontiers that divide social relations into opposed
groups or camps, and this is established by the construction of equiv-
alential linkages between particular demands and identities. The logic
of difference, by contrast, is analogous to the combinatory dimension of
language and involves complexification of a regime or practice through
the disarticulation of equivalential or antagonistic relations and the
incorporation of demands and identities within an expanding regime
or social formation.

Towards a poststructuralist synthesis?

From what I have already argued, it should be clear that

poststructuralists tend to reject the universal rationalism and norma-
tivism of Habermas’s version of critical theory. The Habermasian urge to
overcome the limits and diremptions of modern rationality through a
communicative ethics is too foundational for the poststructuralist con-
cern with difference, fragility, contestation, and a primordial negativity
(Ashenden and Owen, 1999; Flyvbjerg, 1998; Tully, 1999). But what
about the other ways of moving from language and ontology to social
theory? At first glance, it might be thought that poststructuralists ought
to choose between one of these four paths. In other words, they should
focus either on (1) the meanings of words, things, and actions, thus
explicating the various understandings and interpretations of the situa-
tions in which social actors find themselves, which includes the ways in
which our moods and affects inform beliefs, desires, and actions; (2) the
various discursive and non-discursive practices that shape or partly deter-
mine such meanings and understandings, thus focussing on various
activities of meaning-making; (3) the independent causal powers of
the material objects and complex systems that compose and organize the
114 Poststructuralism and After

world; or (4) the underlying rules, logics, and structures of the discourses
and systems that organize and order social reality in various ways.
But the poststructuralist approach I seek to develop here does not
require one to choose between these four paths, for the different dimen-
sions they exemplify are inextricably linked and can be articulated
together in a coherent fashion. Poststructuralists ought thus to focus on
the meanings and beliefs that social actors accord the objects with which
they engage, as well as the way social actors interpret the activities and
actions of other actors they encounter. We need, in short, to develop
ways of interpreting the self-interpretations of social actors by partaking
in a phenomenological reduction, which brackets the pure objectivity
or materiality of things, or the immediate facts, and focusses on their
meaning for subjects in particular contexts (Glynos and Howarth, 2007,
pp. 67, 70–1). Yet this focus is radically insufficient, for this approach
must also strive to connect these subjective meanings to the particu-
lar social contexts and discourses wherein their meaning can be further
elucidated and clarified. For example, terms like ‘Arrivals’, ‘Departures’,
‘Passport Control’, or ‘Baggage Reclaim’, the signs that represent them,
and the material objects and actions to which they refer, are only mean-
ingful in the particular contexts in which they are ‘at home’ so to speak.
These terms and signifiers thus acquire their effective meaning for a
passenger within the context of an international airport or harbour.
At the same time, activities like international air travel are also mean-
ingful practices that consist of interconnected assemblages of objects,
subjects, and actions, which are in turn related to other practices,
objects, contexts, and environments. And these assemblages can and
must be identified and explained in specific ways. The relational and
contextual character of meaning is thus important for making sense of
practices and processes in social life. For example, Peter Winch extends
Wittgenstein’s account of rule-following to identify and render intelli-
gible a range of social practices or activities. Because rules are publicly
available norms that enable human beings to understand and acquire
certain skills and abilities, as well as to judge whether or not such activ-
ities are performed correctly or not, Winch argues that social theorists
should seek to elucidate the rules that actors are following in doing or
performing an activity. In this way, they can be rendered intelligible.
Whilst there may not be an exhaustive or determinate rule for each and
every aspect of a practice, for rules make room for variation and play,
they do provide a general way of exhibiting that practice. For example,
while we must follow certain rules in passing through customs on enter-
ing or leaving a country, or we run the risk of failing to achieve our goal,
 Ontological Bearings 115

the precise ways in which we follow them – how we comport ourselves,

for example, or what we say or do – is not precisely circumscribed. Social
practices thus exhibit a certain logic, which are often related to other
practices or logics, such as international business, tourism, immigration
and emigration, or the participation in political or academic confer-
ences, and they are given meaning by the form of life in which they
partake (Glynos and Howarth, 2007; Howarth, 2005, pp. 322–6).
Poststructuralists thus seek to articulate and calibrate the role of mean-
ings, practices, objects, systems, and structures in an integrated theory
of social relations. But they also insist that the particular systems of
relations that are articulated in various social contexts are radically con-
tingent and incomplete. In fact, in this perspective, all systems and
identities are haunted by a negativity that can never be absorbed or
transcended (Laclau, 1990, pp. 26–7, 94, 213; 1996, pp. 14, 29, 38–9, 52).
What is more, it is the very fragility and historicity of all systems, forms,
and identities that provides an essential starting point for describing and
critically explaining their emergence, sedimentation, and transforma-
tion. These properties also make room for the introduction of concepts
such as power, agency, hegemony, and ideology in accounting for the
change and stabilization of complex social systems.

Conclusion

The interconnected notions of meanings, practices, objects, and log-

ics thus provide the basic raw materials to develop a poststructuralist
approach to social ontology. Yet this framework is only rudimentary and
needs much further refinement. To begin with, it needs greater specifi-
cation if it is to provide a grammar of concepts and logics with which
to critically explain a range of problematized social and political phe-
nomena. But it must also be supplemented with a greater specification
of an appropriate set of methods and research techniques. In fact, the
framework only makes sense in the context of engaging with a press-
ing series of theoretical and concrete issues. This task of fleshing out the
skeletal contours of a relatively empty poststructuralist social ontology
will be carried out in the rest of the book. I shall begin by exploring the
problem of structure, agency, and power, after which I will explore the
implications of its rethinking from a poststructuralist perspective.
4
Deconstructing Structure
and Agency

The complex relationship between structure and agency is a perennial, if

not intractable problem in modern social theory. The problem is reason-
ably simple to state, but not that easy to resolve. It is well captured by
Marx, for example, when he prepares the ground to explain the causes
and consequences of Louis Bonaparte’s dictatorship in France during
the 1850s: ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it just
as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by
themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given, and
transmitted from the past’. In his unusually punchy way, Marx suggests
that whilst there are revolutionary moments when social agents deci-
sively intervene in the historical process to bring about social change,
‘the tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the
brains of the living’. Indeed, just as human beings appear ‘to be occu-
pied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something
that did not exist before’ – in these ‘periods of revolutionary crisis’ –
‘they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and
borrow from them names, battle-cries, and costumes in order to present
the new scene of world history in this time-honoured disguise and this
borrowed language’ (Marx, 1997b, p. 329).
A more contemporary illustration of the problem of structure and
agency is evident in our efforts to account for the global financial
crisis, which erupted in 2008. Was this problem caused by the (irrespon-
sible) actions of individual bankers, who developed and encouraged
the use of complex financial instruments such as securitization to off
load risky loans onto others? Or should our critical explanations focus
on the changing structures of particular banking institutions, and the
growing pressures to make quick and excessive profits, coupled with
the lax regulatory regimes that did little to prevent the actions of

116
 Deconstructing Structure and Agency 117

individual bankers? Might we focus more on the overall national and

global (economic) environment within which banks and individual
bankers operated? Or does any meaningful critical explanation involve
particular combinations of structural and agential factors?
Each of these questions touches upon the problem of structure and
agency, whilst meaningful answers seem to presuppose that we have a
clear understanding of the concepts and their interconnection. A host
of other social and political phenomena and dilemmas can easily be
added to the list. This chapter begins by outlining the scope and vari-
ety of the problem of structure and agency in modern social theory
and then elaborates four main perspectives that have sought to address
the conceptual, methodological, and ethical aspects it raises. I take
Louis Althusser’s structural Marxism and Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism
to exemplify structure-centred accounts, whereas recent developments
in rational choice theory and Anthony Giddens’s theory of structuration
are used to explore agency-centred perspectives. In describing and eval-
uating these perspectives, my aim is to deconstruct the underlying
assumptions and claims of these approaches, thus preparing the ground
for the elaboration of a poststructuralist alternative, which I shall put
forward in Chapter 5.

Scope and variety

It comes as no surprise that the complicated relationship between struc-

ture and agency goes to the heart of much contemporary social and
political theory. Encapsulated by Marx’s neat dictum, the problem of
linking human agents to social and natural structures poses difficult
questions in philosophy, cultural theory, and ordinary social life. In the
field of philosophy and metaphysics, the problem touches upon the
long-standing tension between voluntarism and determinism, thus rais-
ing questions about the extent and limits of our knowledge of the
natural and social world, the character of the human will, the role
of natural or causal laws in effecting change independently of human
action, and so forth. Recent developments in neurobiology and cogni-
tive science, which stress the importance of brain states and the various
‘layers of the body/brain/culture network’, as against philosophical con-
siderations of the mind, have only rendered the problem even more
complicated (Connolly, 2002a; 2005a; 2008a; Habermas, 2008).
At the same time, the problem discloses a range of important issues in
social and political theory, including questions about the relative role of
individuals and groups in social life, as well as questions about power,
118 Poststructuralism and After

conflict, and subjectivity.1 In the first instance, the issue highlights sig-
nificant ontological questions about the nature of human beings and
the worlds they inhabit, act in, and seek to know. What are agents and
how are they to be conceived? Is agency to be restricted to certain sorts
of beings – human beings with intentions, desires, and purposes – or can
the notion of agency be extended to all sorts of beings and entities that
are picked out by particular ontological standpoints?2 How – if it all – is
it possible to conceptualize (social) structures of various sorts, and how
are they to be related to various sorts of (human) agency? Are these ques-
tions in any way answerable apart from detailed empirical investigations
of particular contexts?3
These ontological considerations are directly related to issues of
method and epistemology. Debate is joined in this regard between
different theoretical approaches about the precise explanatory role of
individual and collective human agency vis-à-vis the various sorts of
structural constraint or material conditions that limit social agents
and/or directly bring about social change, whether the latter are under-
stood in terms of social systems, objective laws, or logics. Put differently,
do structures determine individual actions or do individual actions
determine social structures? Questions like these immediately give rise
to further queries about the nature of the structures and agents in
play in any particular investigation, as well as the ways in which
they enable the characterization and explanation of social phenom-
ena. Marxists, structuralists, and Durkheimians find themselves pitted
against Weberians, ethnomethodologists, and rational choice theorists.
Accompanying these methodological differences are debates about
the various epistemological ideals and knowledge claims one can expect
to achieve in the social sciences. Those who place stress on objective
structural factors tend to favour causal forms of knowledge, whether
conceived as laws, well-founded empirical generalizations, or mecha-
nisms, whilst those who stress the role of human agency or emphasize
the incompleteness of social structures tend to favour more contextual
forms of knowledge, as well as more critical and interpretative stances.
Yet it is important to note that the relationship between methodological
and epistemological considerations is contingent rather than necessary.
For example, though rational choice theorists focus most of their atten-
tion on the intentions and decisions of individual agents, they are for
the most part wedded to law-like or mechanistic conceptions of explana-
tion, which are expected to yield predictions and testable propositions.
This raises further questions as to whether rational choice theory is
 Deconstructing Structure and Agency 119

exclusively a species of intentional explanation, as well as queries about

its commitment to methodological individualism. At the same time,
some of those that affirm the radical contingency of objects and pro-
cesses have also affirmed the importance of emergent and structural
causality.4
Finally, the structure-agency problematic has an ethical import.
A long tradition of Western philosophical thought insists on a close con-
nection between human agency and questions of morality. On the one
hand, powerful traditions of thinking such as Kantianism make discus-
sions about morality dependent on the activities of free and rationally
autonomous agents; for without the latter, questions of responsibility
and accountability would be effectively dissolved. By contrast, propo-
nents of structural explanations, which employ law-like generalizations
or causal mechanisms that are not subject to human will or intention,
are questioned about the whole domain of moral conduct and responsi-
ble action. Of course, those who do stress the independent importance
of human intentions and actions are asked to explicate their moral and
ethical orientations and to show how they can be related to their logics
of characterization and explanation. For all concerned, this area of dis-
cussion raises important questions about how we are to conceptualize
human beings and their subjectivity.
It is evident that the problem of structure and agency discloses
a cluster of fundamental issues in the social sciences. Following in
their wake are a range of theoretical endeavours to bring conceptual
and explanatory clarity. Some traditions of social theory endeavour
to bypass the dilemma by prioritizing only one pole of the structure-
agency dichotomy, whilst others complexify this simple resolution by
seeking to connect the two aspects in an ongoing dialectic of struc-
ture and agency. In the latter, structures and agents interact with one
another in various ways. Different perspectives can thus be classified
and positioned along these two axes. Along one axis, they can be defined
according to their relative stress on structure or agency, whilst along the
other axis they can be characterized by their differing dialectical con-
ceptualizations of structure and agency. This yields a grid of four basic
positions: simple structuralism (e.g., Althusserian Marxism), simple vol-
untarism (e.g., Popper), dialectical structuralism (e.g., Bhaskar’s critical
realism), and dialectical voluntarism (e.g., Giddens’s structuration the-
ory). In the rest of this chapter, I shall endeavour to deconstruct
each of these theoretical positions, thus preparing the ground for the
poststructuralist alternative I present in Chapter 5.
120 Poststructuralism and After

Structuralism

For a book on the poststructuralist tradition of social theory, it is appro-

priate that we begin our discussion with structuralism. As I have already
argued, the structuralist and poststructuralist problematics are indebted
to Saussure and his followers for formalizing the notion of structure
and rendering it fit for use in the social sciences. Yet a distinctively
structuralist picture is also evident in the work of the later Marx. I shall
thus begin by returning to a classic theoretical statement by one of the
founding figures of social theory. In his justly famous Preface to A Con-
tribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Karl Marx summarized his
materialist conception of history in the following terms:

In the social production of their life, men enter into definite rela-
tions that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations
of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of
their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of
production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real
foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to
which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode
of production of material life conditions the social, political and
intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men
that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being
that determines their consciousness.
(Karl Marx, 1997e, p. 425)

One immediate implication of Marx’s picture of social life is the impor-

tance he places on the ‘economic structure of society’ in shaping and
conditioning the ideas and beliefs of social agents, as well as the legal
and political systems that govern their conduct. This economic structure
is in turn rooted in a particular mode of material production, whether
feudalism, capitalism, or socialism, which consists of the relations and
forces of production and their dialectical interaction.
At the same time, this ‘guiding thread’ of Marx’s mature writings also
contains a powerful logic of social change, which is grounded in an
objective contradiction between the forces and relations of production
in any given class-divided society. In his words,

At a certain stage of their development, the material productive

forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of pro-
duction, or – what is just a legal expression of the same thing –
with the property relations within which they have been at work
 Deconstructing Structure and Agency 121

hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these

relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revo-
lution. With change of the economic foundation the entire immense
superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed.

In considering such transformations a distinction should always be

made between the material transformation of the economic condi-
tions of production, which can be determined with the precision
of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or
philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become con-
scious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an
individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not
judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness;
on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from
the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between
the social productive forces and the relations of production.
(Karl Marx, 1997e, pp. 425–6)

Social and political change is thus brought about by the interplay

of objective systemic contradictions, which operate behind the backs
of social agents and their forms of consciousness, though at certain
moments they may become aware of these of them. What is more,
the scientific explanation of these changes cannot rely on the experi-
ences and beliefs of social agents – the ‘ideological forms in which men
become conscious of this conflict and fight it out’ – but on ‘the mate-
rial transformation of the economic conditions of production’ alone.
In other words, the transformation and reproduction of social life –
the underlying economic structure and the ‘immense superstructure’ –
‘must be explained . . . from the contradictions of material life, from the
existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations
of production’ (Marx, 1997e, p. 426). Indeed, as Marx puts it, the lat-
ter ‘can be determined with the precision of natural science’ (Marx,
1997e, p. 426).
The internal contradictions of economic and social structures thus
develop independently of the beliefs and actions of social agents. At the
same time, they set powerful constraints on what is possible in the
present and the future. As Marx continues:

No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for
which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher rela-
tions of production never appear before the material conditions of
122 Poststructuralism and After

their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself.
Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve;
since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found
that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its
solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.
In broad outlines Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois
modes of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the
economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production
are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production –
antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one
arising from the social conditions of life of the individuals; at the
same time the productive forces developing in the womb of bour-
geois society create the material conditions for the solution of that
antagonism. The social formation brings, therefore, the prehistory of
human society to a close.
(Karl Marx, 1997e, p. 426)

Human beings can only act upon and change those social structures
they inherit, and which have exhausted their productive capacities; no
real change can occur until immanent possibilities have emerged in the
old structures. Here it is quite easy to discern a powerful teleological
tendency in Marx’s conception of historical change, in which bourgeois
relations of production ‘are the last antagonistic form of the social pro-
cess of production’, which will inevitably be replaced by a more rational
and emancipated social order.
However, it is important to stress that these programmatic formula-
tions do not exhaust Marx’s explanation of social and political change.
On the contrary, a more agency-centred account is developed in other
texts when he stresses the role of class struggles as the motor of history.
This is most evident in the beginning of The Communist Manifesto, in
which Marx and Engels claim that the ‘history of all hitherto existing
society is the history of class struggle’, though of course this concep-
tion can be rendered compatible with a more structuralist account of
history, if class antagonisms are nothing more than the reflections and
expressions of underlying productive relations (Marx, 1997a, p. 246).
Nonetheless, it is certainly the case that Marx’s more concrete analy-
ses of particular events and historical conjunctures (such as his careful
analyses of the class struggles in France during the late 1840s and early
1850s) disclose a richer and more complex set of concepts and consider-
ations. Here social and political change is the product of a range of social
actors, groups, and key individuals, who interact in complicated social
 Deconstructing Structure and Agency 123

circumstances, such that the crystalline clarity of the model presented

in the 1859 Preface is rendered considerably impure. Finally, Marx does
insist in his writings on the distinction between a ‘class-in-itself’ and a
‘class-for-itself’, in which individuals and groups have to become con-
scious of their position and interests in the class structure before they
are able to act to advance those interests in class struggles.
Yet Marx never integrates these two models of society and change in
a satisfactory fashion. On the contrary, his materialist theory of history
either relegates class struggles and social action to the role of ‘mere sup-
plements’ of a more essential logic, such as the conflict between the
relations and forces of production, or he institutes a dualistic theory
of structure and agency, in which the conceptual connection between
the two aspects is not properly theorized. This unresolved ambigu-
ity between structure-centred and agency-centred pictures of society
bequeaths an ambiguous inheritance for later social theorists. On the
one hand, thinkers such as Gramsci, Lukács, and Sartre have stressed the
role of praxis and action in explaining social change, whilst others have
defended and developed more objective and deterministic accounts.

Structural Marxism
Amongst the latter, Gerry Cohen draws upon evolutionary theory and
analytical philosophy to elaborate a functionalist defence of the strong
thesis in Marx, though his emphasis on functional explanation has been
challenged by other analytical philosophers of social science, such as
Jon Elster, who stresses the role of intentional explanation in the social
sciences (e.g., Cohen, 1978; Elster, 1985). For the purposes of our discus-
sion, one significant development of the objective, scientific approach
is evident in the emergence of structural Marxism. Whilst Marx’s writ-
ings clearly emphasized the role of economic structures, and their
corresponding system of political and legal superstructures to explain
social life, his work preceded the structuralist revolution inaugurated by
Saussure and other linguists at the turn of the twentieth century. It was
thus left to more contemporary theorists in the 1960s and 1970s such as
Louis Althusser, Etienne Balibar, Manuel Castells, Pierre Macherey, Nicos
Poulantzas, and others to articulate an explicitly structuralist account of
Marxism.5
Althusser endeavoured to break with all forms of economism and
determinism, in which ideological and political elements such as polit-
ical institutions or particular ideologies are mere epiphenomena of an
underlying material substructure, as well as teleological accounts of his-
torical change, in which abstract notions such as freedom or reason are
124 Poststructuralism and After

seen to motivate and structure all meaningful social change. By contrast,

his ‘return to Marx’ takes forward the structuralist idea that social for-
mations are decentred structures – systems of related elements – which
are not grounded on any human essence or law of history, but consist
of a plurality of elements articulated together into complex ‘structures
in dominance’ (Althusser, 1969, pp. 200–18). In this view, society com-
prises the economic, political, ideological, and theoretical levels, in
which each of these regions can be decomposed into more molecular
components and sub-systems, and each instance exhibits its own rela-
tive autonomy, where the economic level only determines ‘in the last
instance’ (Althusser, 1969, p. 111; Althusser and Balibar, 1970, pp. 100,
227, 325).
Althusser’s structuralist conception of social order is predicated on
a new conceptualization of contradiction, which for him is always
overdetermined. He borrows this concept from Freud’s interpretation of
dreams, coupled with a reworking of causality, which he dubs ‘structural
causality’ (Althusser and Balibar, 1970, pp. 186, 188, 224). Opposing
the reduction of social change to the operation of a single underly-
ing contradiction between capital and labour, in which the latter is
rooted in the conflict between the forces and relations of production,
Althusser stresses a multiplicity of co-existing contradictions that overde-
termine one another. Freud coined the notion of overdetermination to
decipher the two ways in which the dream work transforms latent
dream-thoughts into the manifest content of the dream. This repre-
sentational process either involves the compression of a number of
dream-thoughts into one image (the logic of condensation) or the trans-
ference of psychical intensity from one image to another (the logic of
displacement). By analogy, Althusser uses these logics of psychic overde-
termination to indicate the different ways in which contradictions
‘overdetermine’ one another in the materialist theory of history. In the
‘normal’ reproduction of a social formation, the principal contradictions
of that order are neutralized by the logic of displacement, whilst in a
revolutionary situation they may condense or fuse into a revolutionary
rupture (condensation), which may bring about rapid social change.
The concept of overdetermination thus makes room for a plurality
of contradictions that exist together in various regions and sub-systems
of a social formation. But it is not a story of multicausality, in which
there is a simple pluralization of various causal chains or mechanisms
that interact to bring about an effect. Instead, the concept intimates a
different order of causality altogether – structural causality – which for
Althusser transcends the classical linear or expressive models. Whilst
 Deconstructing Structure and Agency 125

the linear model of causality (i.e., the transitive, mechanical, or effi-

cient conceptions) only captures the effects of one element on another,
and whilst expressive (or teleological or final) conceptions describe the
effect of the whole on the parts, but render the latter an ‘expression’ of
the former – an outward phenomenon of an inner essence – Althusser
draws on Spinoza’s philosophy to conceptualize ‘the determination of
the elements of a structure, and the structural relations between those
elements, and all the effects of those relations by the effectivity of that
structure’ (Althusser and Balibar, 1970, p. 186). He thus introduces ‘a
new concept of the effect of the whole on the parts’, in which the ‘com-
plex totality’ of the ‘structure in dominance’ is ‘a structure of effects
with present-absent causes. The cause of the effects is the complex organi-
zation of the whole, present-absent in its economic, political, ideological
and knowledge effects’ (Althusser and Balibar, 1970, p. 310).
There is no question that Althusser’s theoretical approach reinvigo-
rated the Marxist theory of society, ideology, and subjectivity. His stress
on the relative autonomy of the three (or four) systems of practice
that constitute a social formation, and his emphasis on the ‘overde-
termined’ character of social contradictions, carried the promise of
breaking with the reductionist and determinist model of society rep-
resented in classical Marxism. At the same time, his approach yielded
a distinctive understanding of structure, agency, and power.6 First, in
keeping with his overall philosophy, Althusser’s theory of structure and
agency problematized ‘humanist’ or voluntarist accounts of historical
materialism, which overemphasize the role of human subjectivity and
agency in explaining social change, and placed greater emphasis on the
dynamic interaction of contradictory social structures. It is the latter
that shapes the character and direction of social change. What is more,
somewhat ironically perhaps, Althusser’s reworked idea of structural
causality prised opened the space for a rethinking of political agency.
Many commentators have argued that Althusser’s proposed solution to
the paradoxes of the classical models of causality merely restates the
problem he diagnosed in new terms but does not advance very far in
properly fleshing out an alternative view (e.g., Benton, 1984; Callinicos,
1976; Geras, 1972). Yet his notion of ‘absent causality’ is in my view
a crucial theoretical breakthrough, especially when it is allied with his
concept of dislocation, which problematizes the closure and regularity
of any structure, for it puts us in a position to acknowledge that all social
systems are incomplete or lacking in some respect. In this way, when we
inquire into what Derrida calls the ‘structurality of structure’, we find
that it is always flawed or eccentric; the idea of a centre is constantly
126 Poststructuralism and After

deferred and subject to play (Derrida, 1978, p. 280). By thus stressing

the complex interaction between absence and presence, in which space
is also marked by time, Althusser paved the way for poststructuralists
to foreground the incompletion and play in any order, which is always
marked by an ontological negativity.
Yet Althusser still insisted that the economic system determines which
level is to be the dominant element in any particular society, and
economic processes still determine the functioning and reproduction
of society as a whole albeit ‘in the last instance’ (Althusser, 1969,
pp. 117–28). It is evident that this conception fails to transcend the
determinism of the Marxist theory of society, so that the ‘relative auton-
omy’ of the ideological and political superstructures is confined to
providing the conditions for the overall reproduction of capitalist social
relations. At the same time, he never fully justified the initial grounds
for separating the different levels of the social formation, nor did he
provide a convincing argument for the fact that the economic and ide-
ological levels perform determining roles in all societies (Cutler et al.,
1977, pp. 207–21). Another important consequence of his separation
of society into distinct ‘regions’ or ‘levels’ is to rule out a more rela-
tional conception of different systems of social practice, even though
the latter is implicit in Althusser’s use of the Freudian concept of
overdetermination in which it is impossible to disentangle the different
elements of society as they are mutually intertwined.7 It has been left to
poststructuralists and post-Marxists to stress the relational and incom-
plete character of social formations, whilst also stressing the primacy of
politics in their constitution.
A final difficulty with the Althusserian system of society is that there
appears to be very little space for conflicting forms of interpellation
and identification, which may challenge the existing ‘structure-in-
dominance’. This confirms the functionalist overtones of Althusser’s
theoretical model, in which each element has the purpose of maintain-
ing the reproduction of the system as a whole (Benton, 1984, pp. 105–7).
But it also exposes difficulties with Althusser’s account of agency and
subjectivity. By insisting that subjects are ‘interpellated’ or ‘recruited’
by ideological practices, Althusser’s anti-humanist philosophy opposes
those perspectives that view the subject as an originator of its own
consciousness, or endowed with essential properties, such as economic
interests or primordial identities. Yet ideological practices still form a
‘relatively autonomous’ region of a social formation that is separate
from the political and economic systems, and the ideological is still
determined by the economic.
 Deconstructing Structure and Agency 127

In other words, whilst this perspective correctly shows how the

identities of subjects are discursively constructed by various ideologi-
cal practices, he tends to reduce their autonomy to the operation of
pre-existing structures. For example, in Reading Capital, Althusser and
Balibar argue that

Not only is the economic a structured region occupying its partic-

ular place in the global structure of the social whole, but even in its
own site, in its (relative) regional autonomy, it functions as a regional
structure and as such determines its elements. Here once again we
find . . . that the structure of the relations of production determines
the places and functions occupied and adopted by the agents of pro-
duction, who are never anything more than the occupants of these
places, insofar as they are the supports (Träger) of these functions.
(Althusser and Balibar, 1970, p. 180)

As the economic structure of society determines ‘the places and func-

tions’ that are ‘occupied and adopted’ by social agents, subjects become
little more than the ‘bearers of structures’. And though in my view his
notion of the play of absence-presence, when coupled with his reworked
idea of disclocation, makes possible a different conception of structures,
as well as a role for human and non-human agency, this line of flight is
not fully pursued in Althusser’s thinking. It was left to poststructuralist
Marxists, or post-Marxists, to tread this path.

Agency-centred approaches

The emergence of agency-centred perspectives in modern thought pre-

cedes the structuralist problematic inaugurated by the Marxist tradition.
Whereas Marx accepted Rousseau’s insight that human beings are organ-
ically connected to one other, and thus to the intricate network of
social relations in which they are embedded, agency-centred perspec-
tives focus on the role of free and autonomous human agents, who
have the power to change their social institutions and relations. One
important theoretical source for agency-centred perspectives is liberal-
ism, which emerged in the seventeenth century. Put bluntly, liberalism
functions as a significant other against which Marxism and other more
sociological traditions are constituted (e.g., Macpherson, 1964).
The liberal tradition of thought can be traced back to classical philoso-
phers like Hobbes, Locke, and Smith in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, and it includes the stress on rational autonomy in the Kantian
128 Poststructuralism and After

tradition, as well as the utilitarianism of Bentham, James Mill, and

J. S. Mill. In more contemporary theoretical circles, it is evident in
rational choice theory and game theory, as well as certain variants of
interpretivism (e.g., Bevir and Rhodes, 2003; 2004; Olson, 1965). The
stress on individual human agency also pervades much analytical polit-
ical theory. It is especially visible amongst those who have followed the
philosophies of John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin in reworking liberal
thinking in contemporary democratic societies (e.g., Pettit, 1996; Rawls,
1971; 1996).
Though by no means a classical liberal, the philosophy of Thomas
Hobbes is a good starting point in this regard. In his classical work
of political theory, the Leviathan, Hobbes anchors his account of the
‘matter, form and power’ of a ‘commonwealth’ (or state) in a particular
conception of human nature. He first assumes that by engaging in a pro-
cess of introspection – looking inward into our own beliefs and desires –
we are able to discover the universal properties and characteristics of
all human beings, regardless of time or social context. Because of the
‘similitude of the thoughts and passions of one man’ with the ‘thoughts
and passions of another’, Hobbes argues that ‘whosoever looketh into
himself, and considerith what he doth, when he does think, opine, rea-
son, hope, fear, etc. and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and
know, what are the thoughts and passions of all other men upon like
occasions’ (Hobbes, 1991, p. 10). Put differently, and if we interpolate
the words of David Hume, Hobbes assumes ‘that there is a great uni-
formity among the actions of men, in all nations and ages’, so that
‘human nature remains still the same’ in these various contexts and
times (Hume, 2000, p. 64).
Yet the particular character of Hobbes’s conception of human nature
arises from his concept of a ‘natural condition’ of mankind, where there
is no common power ‘able to over-awe them all’ (Hobbes, 1991, p. 88).
As against Locke’s more benign state of nature, in which we ordinarily
follow the Golden Rule that arises from our respect for natural rights,
and thus love our fellow human creatures, so that the state of war only
comes about when someone proposes to violate someone else’s rights,
Hobbes argued that such a ‘dissolute condition of masterlesse men,
without subjection to Lawes, and a coercive Power to tye their hands
from rapine, and revenge’ would render impossible the security of con-
dition upon which comfortable, sociable, civilized life depends. In this
peculiar state, there would be

no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and con-
sequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the
 Deconstructing Structure and Agency 129

commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Build-

ing; no Instruments of moving and removing such things as require
much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of
Time; no Arts; no Letters; and which is worst of all, continuall feare,
and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore,
nasty, brutish, and short.
(Hobbes, 1991, p. 89)

If this is the state of nature, people have strong reasons to avoid it, and
this can only be achieved by submitting to some mutually recognized
public authority, for so long a man ‘is in the condition of mere nature,
(which is a condition of war,) as private appetite is the measure of good
and evill’ (Hobbes, 1991, p. 90). This famously pessimistic philosophi-
cal anthropology then serves to justify Hobbes’s authoritarian concept
of sovereignty, in which power is vested in a single body, as the only
antidote to the brutishness and disorder of the state of nature. Indi-
viduals in the state of nature use their reason to form a social contract
in which they consent to cede power to an authorized body that can
exercise supreme power over them.
One striking feature of this picture of human beings is the way in
which Hobbes confidently extracts human beings out of their ongoing
social relationships so as to consider them in their natural condition,
as well as his view that human beings are essentially ‘solitary’ and self-
interested agents than can use their reason and powers to achieve freely
chosen ends. Agreements, social contracts, and institutions are thus
the products of individual wills and decisions guided by universal rea-
son, which Hobbes captures with his conception of natural law. This
model of individuals freed from a determining and purposeful universe
is intimately connected to the particular historical context in which it
was elaborated. Writing in the seventeenth century, this context was
strongly marked by the emergence of the modern scientific revolu-
tion with its emphasis on the idea of a world of mechanical causes
and discrete events. Science, for Hobbes, thus consisted of a special
method – Galileo’s ‘resolutive-compositive’ method – in which every-
thing, including the matter, generation, and form of civil government,
‘is best understood by its constitutive causes’ (Hobbes, 1949, pp. 10–1).8
In the view of thinkers like Martin Heidegger and Charles Taylor, this
naturalistic conception of the universe was partly made possible and
bolstered by Hobbes’s vision of human agency and language (Heidegger,
1993b). In this vision, the world consists of a neutral and objectified set
of phenomena from which human beings are ‘capable of achieving a
kind of disengagement . . . by objectifying it’; we can thus
130 Poststructuralism and After

objectify our situation to the extent that we can overcome a sense of

it as what determines for us our paradigm purposes and ends, and can
come to see it and function in it as a neutral environment, within
which we can effect the purposes which we determine out of our
selves.
(Taylor, 1985a, p. 4)

At the same time, language comprises a system of representation that

can picture a world of things that is external to language and to which
linguistic signs refer. Hobbes’s nominalist philosophy thus develops a
model of language in which words are names that designate particular
objects in the world, rather than expressing something about it or our
feelings, or even constituting the world. Expressed in his more epochal
terms, Heidegger argues that the entire modern period is constituted by
a free-standing human subjectivity that ‘views’ the world as a ‘picture’
from which it is detached (Heidegger, 1993b). What we have, there-
fore, is an increasingly atomized picture of the world, where individual
human beings are ‘metaphysically independent of society’, and nature
is conceived as a separate and objective ‘standing reserve’ that we can
explain in causal terms and then use for our own purposes.
Hobbes’s ontological assumptions about the centrality of solitary and
self-interested human beings as the ultimate components of social rela-
tions, and his designative account of language, were shared by many
of his contemporaries. They are evident in Locke’s liberal political
theory and his empiricist epistemology, as well as Hume’s philosoph-
ical and political thought. They also underpin the birth of classical
political economy, as developed by Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and
David Ricardo, and were advanced by Bentham and John Stuart Mill in
the nineteenth century, when developing their utilitarian philosophy.
In fact, they are still present in much contemporary social and political
theorizing, as they form the bedrock of contemporary rational choice
and game theory. But the idea of human societies as the product of
individual will and intention is also evident in the Kantian tradition
of moral philosophy and analytical philosophy more generally. In more
contemporary theory, it pervades much analytical political theory and
is especially visible amongst those who have followed the philosophy of
John Rawls in reworking liberal thinking in contemporary democratic
societies.
In comparison with simple structuralism, then, the agency-centred
view focuses on the beliefs, desires, actions, and decisions of individ-
ual actors, rather than the laws, mechanisms, needs, or functions of
 Deconstructing Structure and Agency 131

social structures or systems. It tends to foreground the role of individual

human actors in producing and reproducing social relations. However,
the logic of the position does not necessarily restrict the approach to
human subjects, because a range of social entities can be regarded as
agents by some perspectives. These include states, groups, movements,
or even social classes. Yet questions are still raised here about how these
more global entities are to be described and analysed. Methodological
individualists are apt to decompose such entities into their individ-
ual human components, whilst others are happy to accept that agency
applies to non-human actors. In general, though, those whom I have
gathered under the label of agency-centred perspectives tend to high-
light the role of individual beliefs, desires, purposes, and traditions,
as well as the importance of strategies and strategic interactions in
accounting for the social world.
The explanation of social phenomena thus involves the bracketing
of the various social contexts and structural constraints impinging on
individual agents, followed by an analysis of their intentions, strate-
gies, and self-understandings. Those subscribing to this perspective thus
tend to investigate the ‘micro-practices’ of social interaction, rather
than the ‘macro-embeddedness’ of actions, in which actions are sit-
uated within particular social contexts and structural constraints (see
Lichbach, 2009). These assumptions serve as a useful antidote to the
dangers of reifying and anthropomorphizing social and political insti-
tutions. In other words, they caution against the temptation to treat
institutions and organizations such as the state as subjects with beliefs,
desires, and intentions. They thus guard against essentialist conceptions
of social formations and political institutions. But these commitments
also leave them vulnerable to the charge of another form of essentialism,
that is, the essentialism of self-contained agents, who are equipped with
the requisite properties to reflect, strategize, and make decisions without
recourse to broader practices, institutions, contexts, unconscious forces,
and so on.

Rational choice models

Perhaps the most sophisticated version of this perspective is evident in
rational choice theory. Not only do many of its proponents exhibit
a fundamental commitment to methodological individualism, whilst
developing various forms of intentional explanation, but they also elab-
orate important substantive theories of politics and society, and they
have sought to test these theories by applying them to empirical prob-
lems and phenomena. Rational choice theory is based on an analogy
132 Poststructuralism and After

between the classical and neo-classical models of the market, on the one
hand, with its commitments to the laws of supply and demand, and the
optimal functioning of the price mechanism, and the construction and
functioning of social relations and political processes on the other (see
McClean, 1987).
As Elster argues, the approach is based on a deceptively simple propo-
sition, namely that ‘when faced with several courses of action, people
usually do what they believe is likely to have the best overall outcome
for them’ (Elster, 1989, p. 22). What has become known as the ‘rational
actor model’ consists of four basic assumptions. First, people have clear
preferences of which they are fully conscious, and they can rank these
preferences from best to worse. Secondly, the logic of preference order-
ing is transitive, and thus logically consistent. In other words, if I prefer
the game of cricket over rugby; rugby over football, then I must prefer
cricket over football. Thirdly, in choosing between different courses of
action they are assumed to maximize their benefits and minimize their
costs by making a rational calculation that advances their interests or
values (e.g., Harsanyi, 1976). Finally, individuals are assumed to be ego-
istic, self-regarding and instrumental; they consistently act in their own
self-interest (e.g., Ward, 2002, pp. 65–89).
In this conception, the idea of rationality is understood in instrumen-
tal terms. In other words, actions are valued as a means to an end.
Rationality thus answers questions about the best means of securing
a particular goal. For example, if I wish to prevent global warming,
then I should support public policies that reduce carbon emissions
and I should engage in social practices that lessen my carbon foot-
print. Rationality in this view is thin, rather than thick or substantive.
In other words, rationality is restricted to those forms of reasoning that
are logically consistent. Reason does not therefore encompass substan-
tive questions about the good life or dwell on the necessary conditions
for the realization of human emancipation, as some critical theorists
have contended. Importantly, this conception of rationality excludes
the idea that social and political actions are conducted for emotional,
ideological, or purely subjective reasons. Preferences in this approach
are usually understood in terms of an individual’s selfishness, that is,
people act self-interestedly, though in some instances self-interest can
be construed in terms of values, though such values must be rationally
ordered. The emphasis on instrumental rationality tends to exclude
social behaviour carried out in accordance with binding norms or sedi-
mented institutional rules, though the latter may be explained in purely
rational terms.
 Deconstructing Structure and Agency 133

Rational choice and social choice theory has been used extensively
in the social sciences for both normative and explanatory purposes. For
example, John Rawls uses John Harsanyi’s theory of games to model
the way in which rational individuals ought to choose principles of jus-
tice when deprived of basic information about their relative economic
and social position in a society. But its more important application is in
terms of positive social and political theory. Perhaps the most persuasive
example is elaborated by Mancur Olson in his explanation of collective
action. What he terms the problem of collective action arises from his
critique of group theory in its various manifestations. Notwithstand-
ing the substantive and methodological differences amongst pluralist,
corporatist, Marxist, and New Right theories of groups – along with their
many internal variations – Olson argues that each theory assumes the
givenness of the groups that are formed in society, and which then inter-
vene in the policy process to propose and implement public policies
(e.g., Brittan, 1975; Jessop, 1982; King, 1987, pp. 64–8; Miliband, 1969;
Schmitter, 1974; Smith, 1995a). In other words, whilst each theory offers
an account of the relationship between groups and the government, as
well as their respective power and influence, they do not satisfactorily
address the difficulties of group formation and mobilization. Pluralists
and Marxists may disagree about which groups are powerful or have
influence, but they tend to presume (even if implicitly) that people who
share common interests will join groups, and that those groups and its
leaders act on their behalf. Corporatist accounts argue that certain insti-
tutional frameworks, such as those engineered by the state, facilitate and
constrain group formation and mobilization, whilst New Right theorists
focus on the deleterious effects of groups on policymaking and state
intervention. Yet in both perspectives the problem of collective action
remains unaddressed.
In short, not one of these viewpoints tackles what Mancur Olson
names the ‘collective action problem’, which centres on the existence
of ‘free-riders’ who question the rationality of joining groups because
the costs of membership are likely to exceed the benefits they obtain
regardless of their involvement (Olson, 1965). This paradox arises from
the fact that the formation and mobilization of groups in pursuit of
collective benefits aim to achieve ‘public goods’, which are both indi-
visible and once attained not excludable.9 However, as Olson succinctly
notes, expounding the basic tenets of rational choice theory, ‘rational
self-interested individuals will not act to achieve their common or group inter-
ests’ (Olson, 1965, p. 2). Unless the potential size of a group is small,
thereby facilitating the monitoring of potential free-riders, or unless the
134 Poststructuralism and After

group can employ negative and/or positive sanctions against potential

free-riders, no groups are likely to emerge in pursuit of their common
interests:

Only a separate and ‘selective’ incentive will stimulate a rational indi-

vidual in a latent group to act in a group-oriented way. In such
circumstances group action can be obtained only through an incen-
tive that operates, not indiscriminately, like the collective good, upon
the group as a whole, but rather selectively toward the individuals in
the group.
(Olson, 1965, p. 51)

For example, my decision to join a trade union or an environmental

interest group rests less upon the common benefits that these organiza-
tions aim to realize, and more upon the exclusive benefits I can obtain
in so doing.
This key insight provides one of the important starting points for
rational choice theorists to rethink the logic of group formation and
collective mobilization. Not only does it raise key questions concern-
ing the relationship between individuals and groups, as well as the
internal dynamics of groups, but it also problematizes the crucial con-
cept of interests. It argues that latent groups may be undermobilized
or not formed at all, whilst also suggesting a number of ‘supply side’
solutions to these structural impediments, though these are not fully
explored. The latter include the centrality of selective material incen-
tives, the role of political entrepreneurs and political movers, as well
as the possibility of groups ‘piggybacking’ on existing organizations,
or making use of state resources, which all reduce the costs of collec-
tive action (see Dowding, 1996, pp. 38–41; Oberschall, 1973, p. 159).
Finally, the orthodox model accounts for the internal structuring of
groups, as well as the cycle of institutionalization and deinstitutional-
ization characteristic of cause groups (especially environmental groups),
as they ‘often move towards organisational hierarchy, relativity passivity
of group members, and corporatist entanglements with the state’ (Ward,
1997, p. 5).
There is no doubt that agency-centred approaches have added much
to our understanding and critical explanation of many key phenomena
of social life. Rational choice theory, for example, helps us to explain
why people join groups and social movements, as well as the forma-
tion of political coalitions and the relations between states. In normative
terms, with respect to a theory of the good, agency-centred approaches
 Deconstructing Structure and Agency 135

(especially contemporary liberalism) yield the largely uncontroversial

assumption that ‘whatever is good or bad about a set of institutions is
something that is good or bad for the people whom they affect’ (Pettit,
1993, p. 23). But, as various communitarians, Marxists, and structuralists
have argued, the problem with these approaches is their subscription to
a form of social atomism that dissolves institutions, structures, and the
thick sets of social relations within which agents acquire their identities
and act (e.g., Mulhall and Swift, 1996; but also Bird, 1999). Institutions,
organizations, and cultural systems are thus reduced to the (rational)
choices and decisions of individual actors, and the latter are ascribed
various properties and dispositions (such as ‘rationality’ or a ‘sense of
justice’) independently of the contexts and traditions in which they
have been acquired.
More specifically, rational choice theorists and proponents of game
theory tend to assume that an agent’s interests (usually understood
as preferences) are given and fixed, and that these interests govern
their beliefs, desires, and actions. Yet there seems no good reason not
to assume that an agent’s preferences and interests, not to mention
their intentions, are shaped and changed by ongoing social processes,
crises, and dislocations; nor is it altogether clear why we should assume
that subjects are not riven with competing identities and interests, in
which interests are shaped and relative to these malleable identities.
At the same time, the normative downside of these ontological commit-
ments is what Phillip Pettit calls a ‘valuational solipsism’, in which it is
assumed that ‘any property that can serve as an ultimate political value,
any property that can be regarded as a fundamental yardstick of politi-
cal assessment, has to be capable of instantiation by the socially isolated
person: by the solitary individual’ (Pettit, 1993, p. 23). Valuational solip-
sism is the flip side of social atomism, which as I have argued stretches
back at least to the work of Thomas Hobbes.
In short, if structuralists run the risk of essentializing social structures,
then agency-centred approaches come dangerously close to a form of
subjective essentialism, in which the individual subject constitutes the
ground of the social. An essentialism of social structures or (human
or non-human) agents does not resolve the problem. What we need
instead is a more sophisticated theory of subject and agency, together
with a consideration of their connection to social and natural struc-
tures, institutions, and cultural traditions. So having raised important
questions about both simple structuralist and agency-centred perspec-
tives, I shall now turn to those approaches that have sought to elaborate
more relational and dialectical perspectives.
136 Poststructuralism and After

Structuration theory

The key contribution of Giddens’s theory of structuration is his endeav-

our to move beyond the objectivism of simple structuralist accounts,
which are best illustrated by Althusser’s rethinking of the Marxist dialec-
tic, and the subjectivism of simple agency-centred perspectives, whether
these are represented by rational choice theory or its interpretative
other. Instead of separating the objective and the subjective – structure
and agency – he seeks to develop a dialectical account of their interac-
tion, which involves a subtle reworking of the basic concepts that are
implicated in the relationship. Because Giddens is critical of those the-
oretical traditions that emphasize only one pole of the structure-agency
dialectic, he seeks instead to deconstruct and rearticulate elements of
these opposed traditions to rethink the problem. He thus draws upon
hermeneutics, phenomenology, and practice-based approaches to con-
nect the structural and subjective dimensions of social reality, and he
uses their theoretical resources to reconceptualize the structural and
contextual aspects of reality.
On the one hand, then, he rejects the idea that social structures are
simply external or internal constraints on human action by stressing
their role in facilitating certain practices and actions; structures exist
within agents as virtual and potential memory traces. On the other
hand, he situates human agents within particular social contexts and
shows how structures are internal to agents; this is because structures are
understood as a virtual set of potential resources that exist as ‘memory
traces’, which can be drawn upon by agents when they engage in pur-
poseful action. At the same time, he complexifies the picture of human
agency by dividing the subject into unconscious/practical and reflective
components.
Giddens thus attempts to move beyond binary accounts of structure
and agency, which privilege either structure or agency in an a priori
way by arguing that the notion of structuration involves the ‘duality
of structure’. Structuration captures the way in which social life exhibits
a ‘recursive character’ – the fact that certain social properties can be
repeated in an infinite fashion – as well as the ‘mutual dependence’ of
structure and agency. The duality of structure thus means ‘that the struc-
tural properties of social systems are both the medium and the outcome
of the practices that constitute those systems’. In this picture of social
relations,

structure is both enabling and constraining, and it is one of the spe-

cific tasks of social theory to study the conditions in the organisation
 Deconstructing Structure and Agency 137

of social systems that govern the interconnections between the two.

According to this conception, the same structural characteristics par-
ticipate in the subject (actor) as in the object (society). Structure
forms ‘personality’ and ‘society’ simultaneously . . . Structure is not to
be considered as a barrier to action, but as essentially involved in its
production.
(Giddens, 1979, pp. 69–70)

Giddens illustrates the duality of structure and agency by focussing on

the way we use language to speak and communicate. Here he draws on
Saussure and the structuralist tradition more generally to demonstrate
the recursive character of language as a system of rules and resources
and the way in which human actions both presuppose structures and
then contribute to their reproduction through their individual acts and
actions. As Giddens puts it,

When I utter a sentence I draw upon various syntactical rules (sedi-

mented in my practical consciousness of the language) in order to do
so. These structural features of the language are the medium whereby
I generate the utterance. But in producing a syntactically correct
utterance I simultaneously contribute to the reproduction of the lan-
guage as a whole . . . The importance of this relation between moment
and totality for social theory can hardly be exaggerated, involving as
it does a dialectic of presence and absence which ties the most minor
or trivial forms of social action to structural properties of the overall
society, and to the coalescence of institutions over long stretches of
historical time.
(Giddens, 1982, p. 114)

Moreover, the recursive and dialectical relationship between system and

action can be extended to other domains and aspects of social life,
whether it is the building of a wall, the construction of a social move-
ment, or the reproduction of a particular form of family life. In this
view, social practices require structures that are drawn upon by agents
in accomplishing particular goals or purposes. At the same time, their
particular interactions with other subjects and objects, and their experi-
ences of such practices, impact upon the structures that make possible
and inform future interactions.
Giddens’s work has attracted considerable critical attention (e.g., Held
and Thompson, 1989). Critical realists like Margaret Archer and Bob
Jessop (which I discuss later in this chapter) have criticized Giddens’s
theory of structuration because in their view it does not properly address
138 Poststructuralism and After

the constraining and determining effects of social structures on human

practices. Rather than dissolving structures and agents into an inde-
terminate theory of structuration, Archer seeks to reinstate the idea
of an ‘analytical dualism’ by emphasizing the constraining and causal
impact of independently defined structural conditions, which pre-exist
and condition/shape social interaction, even though the latter may in
turn change or reproduce the structures, along with their emergent
causal powers and properties (Archer, 1995, pp. 151, 167–8; Stones,
2005, p. 53). In the view of Archer, Jessop, and others, Giddens ‘resolves’
the structure-agency dilemma by simply redefining social structures as
an internal component of human agency, thus producing a new species
of subjectivism or voluntarism. External and internal constraints, espe-
cially the limitations of unequally distributed material resources, are
thus neglected in Giddens’s theory.
Other commentators have disputed these allegations. In Structuration
Theory, Stones convincingly shows that Giddens does retain a com-
mitment to external structures, even though it often remains hidden
or implicit in his theory. For example, in The Constitution of Society,
Giddens distinguishes three types of constraint that confront social
actors: ‘material constraints, negative social sanctions, and structural
constraints that arise from the given character of structural properties
vis-à-vis situated actors’ (Giddens, 1984, p. 176). He thus argues that
‘structural constraints’ stem ‘from the “objective existence” of structural
properties that the individual agent is unable to change. As with the
constraining qualities of sanctions, it is best described as placing limits
upon the range of options open to an actor, or plurality of actors, in a
given circumstance or type of circumstance’ (Giddens, 1984, pp. 176–7,
cited in Stones, 2005, p. 59). Giddens thus immerses the subject in three
sets of structural relations – the structures of domination, legitimation,
and signification – that exist as knowledge potentials for a subject, and
are lodged in ‘memory traces’. These are distinguished from various
‘modalities’, where the latter refer to the particular ways in which sub-
jects use these rules and resources in their actual practices (Stones, 2009,
pp. 93–4).
But whilst these formulations suffice to rebut the idea that there
is no ‘analytical dualism’ between structures and agents in Giddens’s
approach, Stones is still critical of Giddens’s methodological volun-
tarism, which is rooted in his overly abstract ontological presupposi-
tions. For example, in his discussion of power, Giddens is ambiguous
about the relationship between ‘structures as memory traces’ and ‘struc-
tures as resources’. Sometimes the former is emphasized, so that material
 Deconstructing Structure and Agency 139

constraints and capabilities are important in determining the charac-

ter and prospects of social change, whereas in other texts he stresses
the role of material resources, in which case structures are internal to
agents and only instantiated in action. When structures are conceptu-
alized as inner memory traces, he seems to prioritize the hermeneutical
and phenomenological elements of his approach over the material and
the structural. It also means that the division between agency and struc-
ture is blurred so that the task of determining external constraints is
made difficult, if not impossible. In short, Giddens’s account remains
schematic and emptied of particular content when employed to account
for particular empirical instances and contexts of action, transforma-
tion, and reproduction. General ontological questions concerning the
relationship between structure and agency are not complemented with
the concern for particular situated agents acting in specific structural
contexts.
By contrast, in developing his strong version of structuration theory,
Stones argues for what he calls a ‘quadripartite cycle of structuration’,
which as the name implies involves four connected elements: exter-
nal structures, internal structures, active agency, and the intended and
unintended consequences of action. In this view, then, any analysis of
an agent-in-focus can initially bracket the meanings and understand-
ings of the latter to situate the agent in a structural context (external
structures), whilst also exploring the embodied phenomenological con-
ditions within the agent that enable agents to relay between external
structures and their orientations to future actions (internal structures).
The latter are further divided into the ‘general dispositions’ (which
are somewhat akin to Bourdieus’s concept of habitus) within particular
agents-in-focus, and ‘conjuncturally-specific knowledge’, which desig-
nates the changing array of knowledge and understanding that the
agent has of the external contexts within which he or she operates
(Stones, 2009, p. 96). The third element of the cycle consists of active
agency, which picks out the different ways in which an agent either rou-
tinely and pre-reflectively, or strategically and critically, makes use of his
or her internal structures to act in particular situations (Stones, 2005,
p. 85). The final aspect of the structuration cycle is that of intended and
unintended consequences of actions, which shape external and internal
structures, as well as events, outcomes, and the general well-being of
actors themselves.
This ‘quadripartite cycle’ thus endeavours to reconcile the objective
and subjective elements of structuration theory, whilst linking the spa-
tial and temporal dimensions of social life. Stones’s account of social
140 Poststructuralism and After

change suggests that shifts are the result of structural pressures and
determinations, as well as human practices and interventions, which
can actively transform structural contexts. But he also seeks to sup-
plement his ontological reordering of structuration theory with a set
of methodological and epistemological interventions that can ‘develop
bridging concepts’ between Giddens’s highly abstract theoretical cat-
egories of philosophical thought and the conduct of theoretically
informed empirical research. More fully, in articulating a series of medi-
ating concepts and rules between the philosophical and substantive
levels of structuration, his strong theory of structuration seeks to supple-
ment Giddens’s emphasis on ‘ontology-in-general’ with what he calls a
focus on ‘ontology-in-situ’, that is, an ‘ontology directed at the “ontic”,
at particular social processes and events in particular times and places’
(Stones, 2005, pp. 7–8). By shifting focus in this way, the untapped
potential of structuration theory at the empirical and substantive levels
can be mined and exploited.10
In sum, Stones’s sophisticated development of Giddens’s theory seeks
to reinstate the analytical dualism between structures and agents,
though he is wary of making this dualism into a hard ontological
dichotomy. He thus supplements the focus in much of Giddens’s writ-
ings on the way agents internalize their structural conditions by empha-
sizing the material contexts and constraints of actions and practices,
whilst adding a much needed emphasis on the requisite research strate-
gies that can harness the advances of Giddens’s ontological and theo-
retical advances. Indeed, his rethinking and elaboration of structuration
theory pushes us towards another attempt to overcome the sharp sepa-
ration between simple structuralist and agency perspectives in the name
of developing a more dialectical picture.11 This brings me conveniently
to Roy Bhaskar’s efforts to develop a critical realist perspective.

Critical realism

As I have suggested, although critical realists endorse the way in

which Giddens seeks to transcend simple structuralist and intention-
alist accounts by developing a more recursive and dialectical theory,
they are not entirely convinced that his dialectical resolution of the
problem does not end up privileging the role of agents and individual
human agency over structures. In part, this arises from his tendency
to redefine external structures as memory traces that are internal to
human agents and thus to downplay structural constraints on individ-
ual human action. Yet though some of their criticisms miss their mark in
 Deconstructing Structure and Agency 141

crucial respects, their alternative account does add a couple of twists to

contemporary discussions of the issue. The crux of the realist position is
captured by Roy Bhaskar’s claim that ‘society is both the ever-present
condition (material cause) and the continually reproduced outcome of
human agency’ (Bhaskar, 1998, p. 37). For example, individuals choose
to get married for a variety of subjective reasons, and in a range of dif-
ferent circumstances, but each of the individual acts thus contributes to
the reproduction of marriage as a social institution, and these acts could
in some instances result in the transformation of such social structures.
Bhaskar’s discussion of structure and agency thus goes to the heart of
his social theory, which in turn is grounded in his distinctively realist
philosophy of science and social science (Bhaskar, 1975; 1998).
Bhaskar’s critical realism starts by investigating the necessary and uni-
versal conditions for the possibility of any science. His response to this
Kantian question is that scientific practices such as designing and car-
rying out experiments, observing phenomena in the world, drawing
inferences, and so on require a world that is populated by real things and
structures, whose properties and causal mechanisms can be disclosed
and described (Outhwaite, 1987, p. 31). Meaningful scientific activity
must therefore necessarily and universally presume an ontology com-
prising real things that exist independently of our consciousness and
experience. It must also presume that these properties and mechanisms
persist in the ‘open systems’ beyond the closed experimental situation,
where the hypothesized causal chains can be isolated from potentially
contaminating influences (Bhaskar, 1975, p. 91). This transcendental
account of science seeks to capture the depth and richness of the object
world by proposing a threefold stratification: the real, which is made up
of the inherent properties of, and causal mechanisms linking, objects;
the actual, which consists of events; and the empirical, which is made
up of our experiences of such events (Stones, 1996, pp. 28–32). Accord-
ing to Bhaskar, the movement between each of these discrete levels is
contingent and not necessary. Events can thus occur without necessar-
ily being experienced by a subject at the level of its representations;
multiple causal mechanisms and tendencies can be triggered and occur,
yet no actual event or outcome ever takes place, because they may be
counteracted or modified by other mechanisms.12
Bhaskar’s Kantian starting point also informs his account of the social
world. He thus inquires into the conditions that make social science
possible: ‘what properties do societies and people possess that might make
them possible objects of knowledge for us?’ (Bhaskar, 1998, p. 13). Here he
also takes an ‘ontological turn’ in answering this question by positing
142 Poststructuralism and After

the existence of objective structures, rather than the acts or intentions

of individual human agents, or rule-governed behaviour, as the ultimate
ground of social theory (Bhaskar, 1998, p. 20). Social structures provide
the true object of social science. But the logic of discovery and explana-
tion is modified in the social sciences, because of the greater degree of
complexity of the social world, and because of the peculiar character of
social science. It is still the case that both the natural and social worlds
exhibit the same ontological stratification, comprising the empirical, the
actual, and the real. Yet in this conception social structures or systems –
unlike natural structures – do not exist independently of the activities
they govern,13 nor are they simply external to the agents’ conceptions
of what they are doing; they are woven into the practices, actions, and
ideas of agents.
Also, because the systems and structures of the social world are intrin-
sically ‘open’ and contingent, in the sense that they are not amenable
to the ‘closed’ experimental procedures of the natural sciences, which
can control for potentially spurious factors, they are not suitable for
the same kind of empirical testing. This means that the logic of expla-
nation in the social sciences revolves around the positing of generative
mechanisms, rather than the strict deductive logic of exhaustive and
successful predictive tests. In short, whilst Bhaskar posits the existence
of causal mechanisms and trends in the social sciences (Bhaskar, 1998,
p. 21), he opposes the presumption that such trends and mechanisms
are reducible to empirical regularities, and he challenges the belief that
such mechanisms can be confirmed within the confines of ‘closed sys-
tems’ (à la natural science) (Glynos and Howarth, 2007, pp. 29–30).
In his words, ‘the appraisal and development of theories in the social sci-
ences cannot be predictive and so must be exclusively explanatory’ (Bhaskar,
1998, p. 21).
Critical realists thus reject the ‘epistemic fallacy’ associated with
empiricist and positivist paradigms, because it is argued that the latter
reduce the world and our investigative practices to our representations
and knowledge claims about it. In this view, the philosophy of science
and social science is confined to the kinds of statement we can make
about objects or events: their truth or falsity, whether they are analyt-
ical or synthetic, their degree of verisimilitude, and so forth. Instead,
Bhaskar and his school are initially concerned with the way the world
has to be in order for knowledge claims and experience to be possible at
all. He thus insists that the world is composed of real objects with specific
properties and generative causal mechanisms that are presupposed in
our actions and experiences at the phenomenological level, and which
 Deconstructing Structure and Agency 143

make possible our knowledge of the world. Only then can science and
social science gain a foothold in the world it is investigating.
Bhaskar’s abstract discussion of structure and agency has been fleshed
out by those who are interested in more concrete phenomena and social
relations, such as social movements and groups, or the role of the state
and its relationships to social classes and other agencies in civil society
(e.g., Hay, 1995; Jessop, 1982; Stones, 1996). As I have noted, Bhaskar’s
dialectical model gives greater emphasis to the role of external struc-
tural constraints, rather than the strategic conduct of agents, which is
stressed by Giddens and other structuration theorists. But these external
constraints embody the previous practices and actions of social agents,
and they exercise their power by strategically selecting some options
and courses of action over others. The ‘duality’ of structure and agency
in Giddens’s model is now understood in terms of an intertwining of
structure and agency, which are enmeshed together in practice. In this
conception, then, various sorts of agency occur within already existing
structures and contexts, in which the latter furnish particular sets of
possible courses of action, whilst helping us to determine their likely
outcomes. However, they cannot fully determine such outcomes, as this
would be to reduce the complexity of the social world to law-like regular-
ities that can only subsist in the natural world. Like Giddens, structural
conditions and contexts both constrain action, preventing or restrict-
ing some options in certain cases, but they also enable various actions.
Contexts and structures are the product of previous practices and are
‘strategically selective’: they are susceptible to some strategies and closed
to others (Hay, 1995).
One of the best examples of critical realism in practice is Bob Jessop’s
theory of the capitalist state (Jessop, 1982; 1990; 2002a). Building also
on the work of Gramsci, Althusser, Poulantzas, and others, he argues
that ‘the form of the state is the crystallisation of past strategies as well
as [the] privileging of some other current strategies. As a strategic ter-
rain the state is located within a complex dialectic of structures and
strategies’ (Jessop, 1990, p. 129). This complex dialectic of structures and
strategies are in his words ‘strategically selective’ in that they are more
open to some types of political strategy and representation than others
(Jessop, 1990, p. 260). More precisely, drawing on the later Poulantzas,
he argues that ‘state power is a form-determined material condensation
of the balance of (class) forces in struggle’, in which the role of the state
is to crystallize and mediate between the competing demands and inter-
ests that are voiced and articulated in society by representing them in
its different institutional sites and by producing various interventions,
144 Poststructuralism and After

which are designed to respond to them (Jessop, 2002a, pp. 6, 37, 40, 70,
95). State interventions are thus embodied in particular policies, deci-
sions, actions, pronouncements, ideological forms, and so forth. Yet,
in keeping with liberal democratic ideology, although the state is in
principle open to all interests and identities, it still exhibits a ‘strate-
gic selectivity’, so that its accessibility and responsiveness to various
demands reflects the dominant forces that have inscribed their interests
and ambitions into the ‘institutional materiality’ of the state (Jessop,
1982; 1990). (In this regard, the state may be understood as having
different degrees of ‘relative autonomy’ from conflicting interests and
groups in society, thus enabling it to both facilitate the reproduction
of capitalist relations, whilst remaining accessible to different, perhaps
non-capitalist representations (cf., Miliband, 1969; Poulantzas, 1969;
1973; 1978)).
With respect to the practices of policymaking in modern capital-
ist societies, Jessop explores the ways in which various state forms
and regimes exert a differential impact on the processes of policy for-
mulation and implementation. For example, forms of representation
associated with pluralism consist of a series of ‘institutionalized chan-
nels of access to the state apparatuses for political forces representing
interests and/or causes rooted in civil society (as opposed to function
in the division of labour) and recognized as legitimate by relevant
branches of the state’, whereas corporatism involves forms of interest
mediation that are grounded on functionally differentiated groups such
as ‘business’ and ‘labour’ (Jessop, 1982, p. 230). Other systems of rep-
resentation include clientalism, parliamentarism, raison d’état, and so
on (Jessop, 1982, pp. 229–30). Any concrete political system will tend
to exhibit various syntheses and combinations of these basic repre-
sentational systems. This theory of the state arises from Jessop’s more
complex dialectical model of structure and agency, which he develops
in part from Bhaskar’s critical realism (Jessop, 1996).14

Critical evaluation
In general terms, Bhaskar’s critical realism constitutes a welcome return
to ontology in the social sciences, coupled with a relativization of
epistemological and methodological concerns. More substantively, his
approach stresses the role of structures in developing an alternative
dialectical account of structure and agency, and his ideas have been used
to develop more regional theories of the state, gender relations, policy-
making, international relations, and so on (Byrne, 1998; Jessop, 2002a;
2002b; Joseph, 2002a; 2006; Wight, 2006; Woodiwiss, 1990). Yet despite
 Deconstructing Structure and Agency 145

these advances, there are important remainders that are rendered visible
from a poststructuralist perspective.
In the first place, whilst Bhaskar is right to stress the role of ontol-
ogy, his particular understanding of the ontological dimension of social
relations is restricted to an elaboration of the sorts of objects and mech-
anisms that make up the (social) world. Yet, as I suggested in the last
chapter, the concept of ontology for poststructuralists is not reducible
to an inventory of the kinds of things we find in the world. On the
contrary, in addition to inquiring into what sorts of things exist, it is
important to explore the fact that they exist and how they exist. And
of capital importance in this regard is the fact that objects and sub-
jects are marked by an ‘essential instability’, which problematizes a
simple listing of their necessary intrinsic properties and causal capac-
ities, whilst foregrounding their contingency, historicity, and fragility.
Indeed, in terms of social and political analysis, this perspective high-
lights the constructed and political character of social objectivity, which
in turn calls for the elaboration of concepts and logics that are com-
mensurate with these ontological commitments (Glynos and Howarth,
2007, pp. 160–1). In short, then, we cannot sever beings and entities
from the relational contexts in which they appear and from the par-
ticular interpretations that constitute their function and meaning for
agents. In Bhaskar’s account of structure and agency, by contrast, he
clearly privileges the role of structures as a set of independent and exter-
nal constraints on human action, which define for the latter a potential
range of outcomes and strategies. But in so doing he runs the danger
of paying insufficient attention to the necessary and complex connec-
tion between the empirical, phenomenological, and ontological levels
of analysis, that is, the realm of lived experience and action, on the one
hand, and the underlying structures and modes of being that make the
former possible on the other.
Secondly, although Bhaskar’s reformulation of structure and agency
stresses various sorts of structure, and though we are given various
examples of social and physical structures, the very concept of struc-
ture is rarely clarified. Social structures are usually mentioned alongside
the reference to causal mechanisms, real objects endowed with certain
properties and dispositions, as well as the powers and relations that
causally govern events and outcomes. In fact, they are often synony-
mous with these entities. In one rendition of the approach, Brown,
Fleetwood and Roberts argue that any complex entity has an intrin-
sic structure, or a particular articulation of different structures, which
constitutes that object, thereby making it one sort of thing and not
146 Poststructuralism and After

another. Structure thus endows an entity with ‘dispositions’, ‘capacities’,

and ‘potentials’, as well as ‘abilities to act in certain ways’ (Brown et al.,
2002, p. 5). For example, a bicycle is composed of various structures –
wheels, frame, saddle, and handlebars – which are combined together
to form this particular sort of thing, thus furnishing it with the powers
to facilitate transportation. This potentiality may then be exercised and
actualized by persons who use the bicycle for certain purposes. In more
concrete terms, social structures are often defined in Marxist terms, with
recourse to notions like ‘mode of production’, ‘relations of production’,
‘ideology’, and so forth (e.g., Bhaskar, 1998, pp. 28, 56, 75, 81).
This conception of structure is not in itself necessarily problem-
atic. There is a long tradition of thinking that equates structures with
essences or forms. Indeed, in certain respects, this move can be help-
ful in clarifying certain objects and systems, thus enabling us to explain
social practices and processes. However, poststructuralists are not con-
tent to reduce structures to essences or forms. Nor do they accept that
structures are exhausted by their formal causal properties and their par-
ticular modes of historical constitution. Of course, this begs the key
question as to whether or not more can be said about this vital category.
Many poststructuralists respond to this question in the affirmative. More
fully, at an abstract metaphysical level, they excavate the conditions of
possibility of structures, as well as their conditions of impossibility. Or,
to put this in Derrida’s quasi-transcendental language, poststructuralists
inquire into what they term the ‘structurality of the structure’ or the
‘systematicity of the system’ (Derrida, 1978; 1984, p. 2). In more con-
crete terms, they are also concerned to explore and characterize the
concatenation of various sorts of social and natural structures, as well as
different structures and forms in particular contexts and conjunctures,
whilst seeking to find ways of connecting them at more concrete levels
of investigation.
A related set of questions pertains to the concept of agency. As with
other perspectives, much ink has been spilled about the topic of agency,
and critical realists are no exception to the rule. The problem is vital
because it impinges directly on the idea of social change: the con-
testation and alteration of social structures. Bhaskar’s response to this
question hinges on what he calls the ‘transformational model of social
activity’, in which he stresses the importance of making a categorical
distinction between human actions and social structures:

I want to distinguish sharply then between the genesis of human

actions, lying in the reasons, intentions and plans of human beings,
 Deconstructing Structure and Agency 147

on the one hand; and the structures governing the reproduction and
transformation of social activities, on the other; and hence between
the domains of the psychological and the social sciences. The prob-
lem of how people reproduce any particular society belongs to a
linking science of social psychology.
(Bhaskar, 1989, pp. 79–80)

One of the advantages of Bhaskar’s position, in his view, is that it retains

the status of human agency, whilst contesting the genetic fallacy that
suggests that all social structures and practices are the product of indi-
vidual human agency. Yet, according to Bhaskar, this still enables us
‘to see that necessity in social life operates in the last instance via the
intentional activity of agents’ (Bhaskar, 1989, p. 80).
Bhaskar’s account of agency thus focusses attention on the
reproduction, recreation and transformation of social relations and
forms, rather than their creation or production ab initio (see Fleetwood,
2001; 2002, p. 67). But there are still worries about this reformulation.
For one thing, there are queries about the role of collective agency in
bringing about change in Bhaskar’s model, as he tends to focus almost
exclusively on individual intentions and actions (cf., Joseph, 2002b,
pp. 32–3). Indeed, his account of human agency seems to dwell solely on
individual consciousness, which runs the risk of a certain psychologism
that reduces human agency and subjectivity to individual beliefs and
desires. Human actions and practices are thus reduced to psychological
mechanisms and dispositions. In the same breath, Bhaskar does not dis-
tinguish between human agency and human subjectivity, in which he
tends to conflate the two notions, and his concern with agency tends to
focus exclusively on human agency to the detriment of other forms of
agency.
The ‘transformational model of social activity’ is also vital for
Bhaskar’s response to the relationship between structure and agency and
thus to his account of social change. How and under what conditions
does change take place? Part of Bhaskar’s response to this question
also centres on the transformative capacity of social agents in oppos-
ing relations of domination and exploitation in the name of freedom
and emancipation (Bhaskar, 1989, p. 70). In this model, agents use
their available scientific knowledge and their reflexive capacities to make
sense of their situations, to become aware of their real interests, and to
formulate appropriate strategies to achieve their goals. Scientific prac-
tices associated with what he calls the ‘emancipatory’ or ‘normative’
social sciences (such as critical realism) are thus internally connected to
148 Poststructuralism and After

the ‘transformative praxis’ of ‘self-emancipating agents’ (Bhaskar, 1989,

p. 178; 1991, p. 72). Yet it is evident that more can be said about the pre-
cise theoretical and empirical conditions under which transformative
practices become possible, as well as the political constraints and prac-
tices for its achievement. Such questions require further conceptual
elaboration and theory building, which will be elaborated in Chapter 5.
At the same time, there are legitimate and growing concerns about
the idea of fully grounded and indubitable science of society and poli-
tics, which can furnish the basis for critique, normative evaluation, and
emancipation. In the spirit of critical theory, though in a very different
style, Bhaskar’s critical realism contests and reinscribes the dominant
perspectives on these issues. In his challenge both to positivists, who
oppose fact and value, and theoreticists, who split abstract theory and
social practice, he develops a practice of ‘explanatory critique’ in the
human sciences that is explicitly orientated toward ‘human emanci-
pation’ (Bhaskar, 1989, pp. 102, 186). Indeed, in his words, a suitably
conceived and constructed social science makes the connection between
certain sorts of explanatory theory and the practices of critique and eval-
uation ‘mandatory’ (Bhaskar, 1989, pp. 101, 105). Thus, while Bhaskar
does not posit an absolute identity between explanation and critique,
he argues that if certain theories (such as those informed by the phi-
losophy of critical realism) can identify false (i.e., ideological) beliefs by
providing causal explanations of the sources of those beliefs, then we
can and must move immediately to a negative evaluation of the source
of unbelief, as well as a positive evaluation of social action aimed at the
latter’s challenge and removal (Bhaskar, 1989, pp. 101–5). In short, well-
founded explanatory theory has intrinsic implications for critique and
thus for human emancipation.

Conclusion

The four perspectives discussed in this chapter yield four distinct

accounts of structure and agency. But though these perspectives con-
tribute important theoretical resources to our understanding of this
vital problem in social and political theory, each is marked by diffi-
culties that have been highlighted in my critical evaluations. A key
‘deficiency’ that runs through all these perspectives arises from the pre-
sumption that this perennial problem in social and political theory can
be resolved in a theoretical and rational way. One dimension of the
conceit residing in this theoreticist desire is that questions about social
change, human agency, and the constraints impinging (and facilitating)
 Deconstructing Structure and Agency 149

social action can be conceptualized and answered in a determinate way

without a consideration of the contextual and empirical circumstances
within which they arise. But the deficiency is not just empirical or con-
textual. As I shall argue in Chapter 5, and then through an analysis
of the problems of power, domination, and hegemony, the problem
of structure and agency does not admit of theoretical resolution at all,
because it is an issue that resides in social relations themselves. It is to
this clarification and elucidation that I now turn.
5
Structure, Agency, and Affect

The deconstruction of the simple structuralist and voluntarist perspec-

tives in the previous chapter, coupled with the problematization of the
dialectical perspectives of Giddens and Bhaskar, furnishes vital starting
points, as well as certain theoretical resources, to address the problem of
structure and agency. But it also discloses a number of conceptual blind
spots and questions that call for further exploration. On the one hand,
it is clear that the structuralist perspective emphasizes important con-
straints on human agency, whilst the agency-centred perspective stresses
the autonomous or relatively autonomous role of (human) agents in
constituting structures and producing differences of various sorts. But
each perspective tends to privilege one element of the dichotomy they
presuppose, thus reducing the other to the subordinated pole of a binary
opposition.
On the other hand, the dialectical perspectives of Giddens and
Bhaskar endeavour to link together structure and agency in their
efforts to sketch out a dynamic interaction between these two ele-
ments. ‘Structuration’ and the ‘transformational model of social action’
are their respective names for this interweaving (Bhaskar, 1989; 1998;
Giddens, 1984). Dialectical approaches thus provide important plat-
forms to develop a more complex account of the problem. However,
Giddens’s hermeneutical approach tends to prioritize agency, whilst pre-
suming the existence of structures and systems, and does not develop
the theoretical sources for their proper analysis. Critical realists like
Bhaskar tend to emphasize the role of structures, often conceived as
external material constraints on human action, though they accept that
agents can change structures in certain circumstances. As I have also sug-
gested, there are significant ambiguities and insufficiencies in their dif-
ferent conceptualizations of structure and agency. This extends to their

150
 Structure, Agency, and Affect 151

different accounts of the relationship between internal and external

structures and between the ideational and material dimensions of social
reality. There are also questions about the conditions under which social
and political change arises. In short, there are important ambiguities and
difficulties in their very definitions and conceptualizations of structure
and agency.
This chapter puts forward one way to develop a distinctively
poststructuralist account of structure and agency. In contrast to reduc-
tionist and dialectical accounts, I shall argue that this thorny issue in
social and political theory admits of no decisive theoretical resolution.
The relationship between structure and agency is instead the site of a
critical paradox in social reality that cannot be bypassed or transcended,
but which foregrounds the contingency and finitude of human subjec-
tivity, as well as its ability to act. This does not mean that the problem
does not exist, nor does it imply that we cannot advance various theoret-
ical therapies, which can help us to engage with this issue in particular
contexts and empirical investigations. To elaborate the materials that
can lay the basis for the articulation of these theoretical therapies, I shall
begin by exploring the concept of structure in more detail.

The concept of structure

Before setting out the poststructuralist conception in detail, it is neces-

sary to say more about the concepts of structure and agency. In Gallie’s
terms, both structure and agency are essentially contested concepts.
In other words, there are deep and persistent ‘disputes about their proper
uses on the part of their users’ (Gallie, 1956, p. 169). It is also the case, as
Raymond Boudon suggests, that ‘the meaning of the concept of struc-
ture varies with the context in which it is employed’ (Boudon, 1971,
p. 46). For example, the structure of a large organization can help an
employee or analyst to see formal lines of responsibility between its
component parts or track flows of information. A system devised by a
football manager serves other purposes: to develop a strong defence or
to score more goals. The character of an object, and its pattern of inter-
actions with other elements, is thus relative to the different situations
and schemas within which it is positioned and against which it is viewed
(Boudon, 1971, p. 46). These various emphases and nuances come into
play when a particular object or process has to be characterized and
analysed in particular social circumstances. Structure is thus relative to
situations and must be specified in these particular contexts. Finally, as
152 Poststructuralism and After

patterns of related elements, structures can take social, natural, virtual,

or physical forms, though these distinctions need to be spelled out.
Despite these variations and differences, there is nonetheless a general
agreement that the concept of social structure is employed to capture
the constraints on social action and the limits of human agency in its
various forms. If put in formal terms, we might ask how an agent X
is constrained or limited by Y to do Z. Debate then ensues about what
counts as a constraint or limit, how various agents and constraints are
to be conceptualized and employed, and what content is to be accorded
to the different variables in play. The various supplements and fine dis-
tinctions which are then added – the differences between internal and
external structures, positive and negative constraints, the relationships
between ends and means, and so on – work within the particular per-
spective that is adopted. What is more, these various emphases and
refinements have to be employed in concrete circumstances and thus
connected to other concepts and empirical data.
Yet poststructuralists still insist that more can be said about social
structures at the abstract or metaphysical level. In the first place,
as I have argued, poststructuralism emerges principally from the
deconstruction of a fully centred and fixed structure, which weakens
and pluralizes the basic assumptions of the structuralist model (Derrida,
1978; 1981a, p. 9). Nonetheless, there are still important continuities
between the two approaches. Structuralists and poststructuralists both
emphasize the symbolic and relational character of social structures, at
the conscious and unconscious levels, and they ‘decentre’ the human
subject, which is positioned within language and discourse as a place
from which it can speak and act. Human subjects and agents are thus
never purely external to social structures, which are conceived as finite
symbolic orders. Instead, structures position individual and collective
human actors in language and discourse, and this positioning and shap-
ing of actors involves the exercise of power and relations of domination.
Symbolic orders are themselves the products of power and exclusion.
However, the key difference between the two perspectives arises
because of the different ways in which they characterize social struc-
tures, as well as their implications for rethinking human agency and
subjectivity. As I have argued, social structures in the poststructuralist
conception are always incomplete and contingent orders, because their
internal constitution lacks an object or signifier, which renders them
precarious and vulnerable entities. In Lacanian terms, each and every
symbolic order – and thus each and every subject – is haunted by ‘the
real’ that can never be fully represented and domesticated (Lacan, 2006,
 Structure, Agency, and Affect 153

pp. 320–6; Žižek, 1999, pp. 161–2). But this means that social structures
are also marked by an ‘outside’, which partially constitutes the ‘inside’
(Staten, 1984, pp. 18, 24). To lack a thing is to presume that there is
something more that is required to fulfil its identity or essence. Lack and
excess, immanence and transcendence, are thus imbricated in an ongo-
ing dialectic, though there is no possibility of a rational reconciliation
of the two poles.
We have already noted the way in which Derrida endeavours to decen-
tre the concept of structure in the writings of Saussure and Levi-Strauss
by introducing an element of ‘play’ into the organization of different
sets of relations. In his view, the centre in structuralist theory (and meta-
physical thought more generally) is both immanent to a structure, yet
also somehow outside or external to the elements that are related, so
that it becomes in this sense a point of transcendent order (Derrida,
1978, pp. 278–80). This thinking is predicated on Derrida’s critique of
a key motif in the Western philosophical tradition – the sharp demar-
cation between an inside and an outside – in which he questions and
weakens the metaphysical division between the essential and accidental
features of a being, showing that one presupposes the other. In fact, his
critique endeavours to show the constitutive function of this division,
in which the outside – ‘writing’ or ‘materiality’, for example – is neces-
sarily required for the identity of the inside, such as speech or ideality
(Derrida, 1981a, pp. 24–9). As Henry Staten puts it,

Derrida’s question with respect to this schema is so simple that it can

scarcely be misunderstood and so radical in its implications that it
can scarcely be understood. It is this: if essence is always exposed to
the possibility of accidents, is this not then a necessary, rather than
a chance, possibility, and if it is always and necessarily possible, is it
not then an essential possibility?
(Staten, 1984, p. 16)

The effect of this essential possibility is radical. If a ‘constitutive outside’

is necessary for the constitution of objectivity and meaning, then it is
simultaneously the condition for its impossibility.
The dependence on something that has been excluded, which is thus
rendered absent, opens up the structure to that which is outside, and
it is this contamination of presence and absence that destabilizes the
fixity and permanence of identity, as well as the ultimate meaning of
objectivity. The subtle interplay between identity and its other is neatly
encapsulated by Staten:
154 Poststructuralism and After

Derrida does not want to deny the self-identity of concepts or of

entities-as-given-to-knowledge; he only denies what we would call
the impermeability of the as-such, the transcendentality or logical
superhardness of the barrier that marks off the conceptual purity of
X from everything that is not-X. It is not that identity is drowned in
otherness, but that it is necessarily open to it, contaminated by it.
(Staten, 1984, p. 18)

This abstract reworking of metaphysical oppositions between identity

and difference, form and formlessness, structure and flux, enables social
and political theorists in the poststructuralist tradition to rethink the
idea of social structure.
Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and others have used these assump-
tions to elaborate an alternative conception of social structures (Laclau,
1990; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). More precisely, they employ Derrida’s
deconstructive reading of sharp binary oppositions between essence and
accident to develop an argument in which social antagonisms disclose
an irreducible negativity in social relations and practices. For example,
when a worker is laid off because a company decides to move its oper-
ations to a place where the prohibition of unions enables it to make
greater profits, then the resultant antagonisms between the union and
the company (if they occur) are evidence of the failure of both parties
to achieve their identities and attendant interests. The worker can no
longer be a worker, and this lack in the worker’s identity causes him or
her to struggle to attain or retain it. This negativity of opposed forces,
which prevents the full constitution of each, cannot be recuperated in
terms of an underlying logic of history or an exhaustive set of causal
conditions. All social structures are thus marked by a ‘constitutive out-
side’ that forms and deforms them. This picture of social relations also
grounds Laclau’s reworking of the fundamental tension in Marx’s two
conceptions of social change, which we discussed in Chapter 4 (Laclau,
1990, pp. 5–8). Instead of separating a conception of history that is
based on the necessary contradiction between the forces and relations
of production, or on the contingent struggles between social classes,
he proposes a subtle interweaving between necessity and contingency –
origin and supplement – in which all social objectivity is threatened and
destabilized by that which it excludes (Laclau, 1990, pp. 23–6; 2005).
Both social and natural structures take the form of patterned relation-
ships that constitute and constrain the elements they connect. But social
structures are distinctive in that they are limited symbolic or discursive
orders, in which the objects and practices that are constituted by them
 Structure, Agency, and Affect 155

are relational and contingent. The meaning of objects and practices thus
depends on the particular worlds and contexts in which they are situ-
ated. More concretely, systems of social relations are contingent and
historical formations, which are fragile entities that are always vulnera-
ble to social change. Their creation also involves the exercise of power,
and thus the primacy of politics in the construction of social reality
(Laclau, 1990, pp. 31–6). In this schema, the identities of social agents
are constituted within structures of articulatory practice, whilst political
subjects arise when agents identify anew under conditions of disloca-
tion. I shall develop these aspects in more detail later as we unfold the
poststructuralist approach in this book.

Agency and subjectivity

What, then, about the concepts of agency and human subjectivity in

this perspective? Discussions about agency in social theory often focus
on particular centres of agency, that is, the human will, the subject, real
objects, the soul, and so on. But whilst it is important to explore the
locus of agency, one should start by focussing on the concept of agency
in its strict sense: the actions, practices, or interventions that produce
outcomes or bring about changes. As Giddens puts it, agency is about
‘acting otherwise’; it is about the ability ‘to intervene in the world or to
refrain from such intervention, with the effect of influencing a specific
process or state of affairs’ (Giddens, 1984, p. 14). Agency in general is
thus the actual and possible capacity to make a difference in a particular
situation. In terms of social theory, the problem of structure and agency
is about the critical explanation of these changes and differences. What
are the conditions under which changes and new outcomes occur? What
are the empirical and theoretical components of this quest? How can
theoretical reflection help us to explore these empirical questions?
As we have noted, critical realists have argued that the concept of
agency can be extended to a greater range of objects, for it resides in the
inherent structures of things or the structure of relations between things.
Such inherent structures or dispositions take the form of causal powers,
which are manifested or realized in certain structural conditions, as long
as there are no obstacles or counter-tendencies that prevent their real-
ization (Clegg, 1989, p. 121). For example, a match bursts into flames
when struck against a rough or chemically treated surface, though it
does not do so if it has been left out in the rain. Yet critical realists
still insist that human agency possesses a qualitatively different kind
of property – a mental kind – that is rooted in the capacity of human
156 Poststructuralism and After

beings to think, reason, reflect, and decide about their social worlds and
social relations. Human beings have consciousness, intentionality, and
rationality and thus differ from other objects in the world. Indeed, in
Bhaskar’s ‘transformational model of human agency’, social structures,
unlike physical or natural structures, do not exist independently of the
agents’ conceptions of what they are doing in their activity (Outhwaite,
1987, p. 53).
By contrast, poststructuralist theorists like Jane Bennett and William
Connolly, who take their bearings from Nietzsche, William James,
Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, and Deleuze, also conceptualize agency in
terms of ‘the (differentially distributed) capacity to make a difference
in the world’, though ‘without knowing quite what [they] are doing’
(Bennett, 2001, p. 155). Building on this idea, though drawing more
heavily on recent developments in complexity theory, Connolly elabo-
rates ‘a distributed conception of agency’ that involves ‘multiple modes
and degrees of agency in the world’, as well as the ‘innumerable inter-
sections between nonhuman force-fields of several types and cultural
life’ (Connolly, 2010, pp. 17, 22–3, 31). He argues against the possibility
of ‘a fully adequate conception of human agency’, because each of the
dominant theoretical approaches, whether Christian, Kantian, or posi-
tivist, harbours tensions and aporias that prevent its realization. Instead,
he advocates a move away from the currently available ‘tri-archical’
model – ‘nature without agency, humanity with imperfect agency, God
with perfect agency – to a heterogeneous world composed of interact-
ing spatio-temporal systems with different degrees of agency’ (Connolly,
2010, p. 22). In this approach, human agency is not reducible to the rest
of nature, where the latter is viewed as deprived of creative power, ‘nor
to supplement a human will divided against itself with divine grace’.
In Connolly’s words:

It is to appreciate multiple degrees and sites of agency, flowing from

simple natural processes, through higher processes, to human beings
and collective social assemblages. Each level and site of agency also
contains traces and remnants from the levels from which it evolved,
and these traces affect its operation.
(Connolly, 2010, p. 22)

Bennett and Connolly thus extend the notion of agency to non-human

objects and processes. Although human beings are distinguished in this
perspective from non-human objects, the difference is one of degree
rather than kind (Bennett, 2001, pp. 155, 163). In this way, agency
 Structure, Agency, and Affect 157

is extended to a wide range of things, processes, and forces, thus

transcending any particular set of agents, such as human beings. In what
Bennett calls an ‘enchanted materialism’, differential degrees of agency
‘reside in the intentional self, the inherited temperament of a self, a
play-drive, molecules at far-from-equilibrium states, nonhuman ani-
mals, social movements, political states, architectural forms, families,
and other corporate bodies, sound fields’ (Bennett, 2001, p. 155). Her
contribution to what some have labelled a ‘new materialism’ makes pos-
sible a new and open sensibility, coupled with novel tactics of the self,
which can enrich the ethical dimension of social life (e.g., Coole and
Frost, 2010).
The concept of agency is enlarged and extended in both critical real-
ism and a Nietzschean/Deleuzian inflected poststructuralism. Yet there
is still a noteworthy distinction to be drawn here. Perhaps surprisingly,
Bhaskar and other critical realists retain a qualitative difference between
human and non-human forms of agency, in which the former is con-
nected to concepts of intention, will, and desire. On the other hand,
Bennett and Connolly (and other poststructuralists in the Deleuzian
tradition or who subscribe to the ‘new materialism’) are content with
a difference in degree between human and non-human agents, rather
than a difference in kind. This means that human agents are not in
possession of some special and unified agency, which guides their deci-
sions and actions. As against mainstream conceptions of agency and
will, such as those developed in Christianity, Kantian philosophy, or
modern positivism, they discern in metaphysical thinking either a will
that is divided against itself or various modernist conceptions of subjec-
tivity that completely exclude the role of human agency and will in the
name of law-like explanations of the social and natural worlds.
How should we orientate ourselves towards these opposed perspec-
tives, and what are their implications for understanding structure and
agency? In my preferred interpretation of poststructuralism, the con-
cept of agency ought to be extended to a large cluster of entities
that would include non-human agents and natural objects. Seen from
this perspective, Bennett is perfectly correct to stress that agency is ‘a
force distributed across multiple, overlapping bodies, disseminated in
degrees – rather than the capacity of a unitary subject of consciousness’
(Bennett, 2007, p. 134). This has the positive effect of decentring the
human agent, whilst emphasizing the embodied character of agency.
It is a view that finds suggestive resonances in Bruno Latour’s concept
of ‘actants’, which emerges in the development of his actor-network
approach (e.g., Latour, 2005). Yet I still want to insist upon a qualitative
158 Poststructuralism and After

difference between human and non-human agency, even though the

concept of human agency is not parsed out in terms of a sovereign
conception of human subjectivity and will. I thus accept the differen-
tia specifica of human agency in critical realism, but reject the fully,
self-determining conception of human subjectivity that it appears to
endorse. At the same time, whilst I am happy to embrace the decen-
tring of the human agent in Bennett’s enchanted materialism, as well as
the ethical and political implications she develops, I still want to retain
the specificity of human agency, which is intimately connected to the
notion of human subjectivity. In this view, materialism does not equal
naturalism or realism.
In steering this tertium quid between Bhaskar’s critical realism and
Bennett’s and Connolly’s Spinozist and Deleuzian orientation, it is
important to begin by noting that I do not regard the concepts of agency
and human subjectivity as synonymous notions. If agency involves the
production of difference, then human beings can in certain circum-
stances make a difference. But to make sense of human agency we must
add a further ingredient. This is the idea of human subjectivity, which
in my view concerns the quality of being a subject. Who am I? What and
how do I think? What is my identity? How is the subject formed? What
is the connection between the logic of subjection, on the one hand, and
the emergence and production of new subjectivities on the other? How
does one incorporate the role of affects, emotions, and the body into
our thinking about human agency? I shall explore these questions in
greater detail in the next chapter, but I want to say a little more about
this concept here.
The first defining feature of human agency qua subjectivity is the
primacy of meaning and signification. This is because human subjects
are in certain key respects ‘self-interpreting animals’, who interpret
the particular worlds they inhabit, and which partly constitute them
(Taylor, 1985a; 1985b). But, as I have argued in Chapter 3, this empha-
sis on meaning and context is not exhausted by hermeneutical styles
of theorizing, in which the subject is constituted by its conscious self-
understandings and reflective capacities. Whilst it is true to say that the
use of language enables a human being to express its feelings, beliefs,
and desires, and thus create its various identities, this does not fully
capture the way that the symbolic order impacts upon the subject.
The primacy of the latter in most variants of poststructuralist the-
ory draws attention to the pre-existence of a discursive structure into
which human beings are thrown and thus marked. It refers, in other
words, to the reservoir of meanings, values, bodily dispositions, and
 Structure, Agency, and Affect 159

cultural differences, which enable human beings to become subjects

with identities in the first place.
One upshot of this marking is that the subject is effectively ‘decen-
tred’, as it is attached to a set of significant differences that position
it in certain ways. This starting point also means that the subject is
marked by ‘the other’ – the law of the symbolic order – as well as var-
ious unconscious desires and investments, fantasmatic and imaginary
identifications, which are related to the institution and logics of that
order. The subject is effectively divided from itself, as it is mediated
and forced to communicate by a signifying system over which it does
not exert full control. Poststructuralists thus problematize the idea of
a fully present subject communicating with a fully present listener by
employing a fully transparent medium of communication. The subject
is also marked by a ‘lack’, which only its identifications can ‘fill’, and
even then this process of ‘filling’ is never complete. As we shall see,
the immersion of the subject into a world of discursive practices that
precede them enables poststructuralists to develop a critical, though
non-epistemological account of the role of ideology in the formation
and operation of subjectivity.
On the face of it, these propositions seem a short step away from the
idea that the subject is simply a dispersed element in a system of linguis-
tic signs or statements, a view which is often (and somewhat mistakenly)
associated with Michel Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge (Foucault,
1972; see Howarth, 2003). Indeed, it is this notion which animates
many critics of poststructuralism. Two opposed set of criticisms are often
voiced. On the one hand, poststructuralists are alleged to reduce sub-
jectivity to questions of social identity, or even worse to linguistic or
textual differences. In this view, the subject is either simply a disembod-
ied place or position in language or, in its more extreme formulations,
poststructuralism is allegedly complicit with voluntarist or sovereign
conceptions of the subject, in which the latter is as infinitely malleable
as the identities which he or she constructs. On the other hand, it is
often claimed that poststructuralists are unable to account adequately
for the agency of social actors. In this view, the subject is determined
by ‘reified, quasi-structures’ such as discourses or ideologies, which
function to ensnare or subject the individual to the prevailing power
structure (Bevir and Rhodes, 2005, p. 180). Because poststructuralists
like Laclau explore the meanings of beliefs and actions of individuals
within discursive contexts, in which the latter are understood ‘as the
relations between . . . semantic units’, they ‘allow almost no room for
human agency’; indeed, for poststructuralists in general individuals are
160 Poststructuralism and After

‘mere effects of discourse’ (Bevir and Rhodes, 2006, pp. 91, 105) In the
next section, I want to problematize and then contest such mischarac-
terizations of the poststructuralist approach, whilst developing a more
complex model of subjectivity, structure, and agency.

A dynamic model

Is the subject reduced to a position or identity within discourse or

symbolic structures? Is the subject denuded of agency? Or is the sub-
ject unconstrained and free floating? To address these questions and
criticisms, I shall build on those poststructuralists who have proposed
a dynamic account of the relationship between structure and agency
(Glynos and Howarth, 2008; Laclau, 1990; Torfing, 1999). Following the
arguments laid out in Chapter 4, my strategy for developing a model
of this sort is to begin by deconstructing the sharp binary opposition
between structure and agency, in which one of the terms is elevated
over the other, after which I seek to rework this division by articulating
a new conceptual infrastructure, which reorders each element within a
distinctively poststructuralist ontological framework. The key challenge
for this approach is how to avoid the dichotomies and dualities that still
permeate other dialectical models, such as those developed by Giddens
and Bhaskar, whilst doing justice to the various elements in play.
But an immediate difficulty arises about the very starting point of the
investigation. Starting with agency or structure, and thus prioritizing
one or the other, would seem to defeat the deconstructive ethos. How,
then, to proceed? In line with its theoretical genesis and emergence,
the poststructuralist strategy is to begin by first feigning to affirm its
erstwhile structuralist credentials, in which agents and subjects are sub-
merged in, and determined by, particular systems or structures, but then
systematically to loosen the initial assumptions and parameters of the
structuralist model. A stronger version of human agency then emerges
in the new spaces disclosed by the weakening of the initial axioms. This
approach is neatly executed by Laclau. He begins by fully endorsing the
structuralist vision: ‘I am a product of structures; there is nothing in
me with a separate substantiality from the discourses making me up;
a total determinism governs my actions’ (Laclau, 1990, p. 44). But he
immediately poses a critical question: ‘What happens if the structure
I am determined by does not manage to constitute itself, if a radical
outside – which does not share a common measure or foundation with
the inside of the structure – dislocates it?’ His answer is that in such cir-
cumstances structures are not capable of determining my actions, ‘not
 Structure, Agency, and Affect 161

because I have an essence independent from the structure, but because

the structure has failed to constitute itself fully and thus to constitute
me as a subject as well’ (Laclau, 1990, p. 44). In this dynamic picture
of structure and agency, freedom arises during these experiences of dis-
location. In Laclau’s words: ‘The freedom thus won in relation to the
structure is therefore a traumatic fact initially: I am condemned to be
free, not because I have no structural identity as the existentialists assert,
but because I have a failed structural identity’ (Laclau, 1990, p. 44).
Giving short shrift to the claims that poststructuralists are either not
interested in the problem of structure and agency or completely ‘dis-
solve’ the problem by making it a matter of linguistic or subjective
construction, Laclau goes on to argue that ‘[t]he opposition between
a society that is completely determined in structural terms and another
that is entirely the creation of social agents is not an opposition between
different conceptions of the social, but is inscribed in social reality itself ’
(Laclau, 1990, p. 60). Indeed, this complex dialectic follows from the fact
that ‘the subject exists because of dislocations in the structure’ (Laclau,
1990, p. 60. My emphasis). Assuming, then, that systems of social
relations are structurally incomplete, subjects become active agents or
political subjects when they can no longer ‘go on’ in performing their
normal practices and regular routines.
Bringing poststructuralist theory into conversation with phenomeno-
logical and existentialist motifs developed by philosophers like Husserl
and Heidegger, as well as psychoanalytic themes borrowed from Freud,
Lacan, and Žižek, Laclau thus sketches a movement away from the idea
of subjectivity as simply a certain position within a discourse to the
idea of a ‘radical subject’ that is constitutively incomplete and split
(Laclau, 1990; 2004; Laclau and Zac, 1994). This conception of sub-
ject is predicated on four notions – lack, dislocation, identification, and
decision – which furnish poststructuralists with the conceptual resources
to distinguish subjectivity from identity and to address the importance
of agency. To begin, because the subject is immersed in a social order
that is constitutively incomplete, it is marked by an internal lack or
impossibility, which is only disclosed in certain circumstances. We may
conceptualize these conditions as dislocatory events. These are social sit-
uations where it is no longer clear how a subject is to ‘go on’ – how
it is to follow the rules, for instance, or engage in routinized prac-
tices. Lack is thus revealed when identities are questioned or disrupted
in situations where the contingency or the undecidability of dislocated
social structures is made visible. It is in these situations of structural
failure that we see the emergence of radical subjectivity, as subjects are
162 Poststructuralism and After

literally compelled to identify with new objects and discourses to fill the
lack made visible by a dislocatory event. In Laclau’s words, the subject
is nothing more than the ‘distance’ between the undecidability of the
structure and the moment of decision (Laclau, 1990, p. 30).
This concept of radical subjectivity holds at both the individual and
collective levels, as well as for non-political and political events and
processes. For example, as an individual human agent, my subjectiv-
ity may be dislocated when I confront a crisis in my personal or social
life, and I must take stock of my goals and plan. In this situation, a sub-
ject’s normal routines are disrupted and a new direction may be decided
and embarked upon. When these decisions are taken by those occupy-
ing key subject positions and powerful personages, such as presidents
or trade union leaders, they may have an immediate political import.
On the other hand, when an important political leader is faced with a
dislocatory situation – a foreign invasion, for example, or a charge of
corruption – the decisions he or she takes are likely to have significant
social and political consequences. Similarly, social dislocations may lead
to the construction of new collective wills and political forces, which
can link together different agents that may bring about or stall social
change. In short, then, an individual becomes a subject when he or she
mislays his or her papers five minutes before an important meeting is
about to start and scrambles around in a panic trying to find it. But black
schoolchildren and youth in Soweto in June 1976 became radical polit-
ical subjects when they took on the might of the South African police
and army with the demand to end Bantu Education and in the name of
‘Black Power!’ and ‘Amandla!’ (Glynos and Howarth, 2008, p. 163; see
Howarth, 2000b).
These subjective identifications and decisions thus form the ground
of new discourses and social relations, though in keeping with the
ontological postulates of the poststructuralist paradigm the objects
with which subjects identify are always divided and lacking in certain
respects. These objects are thus flawed transcendents whose fullness
can never fully be achieved in any concrete situation. What is more,
Laclau and others have elaborated a grammar of connected concepts
that are associated with this radical concept of subjective identification,
which they connect to the various ways in which systems of social rela-
tions are structured in various historical contexts (Laclau, 1990; 2005;
Norval, 1994b; 1996; 2000b; Smith, 1994a; 1994b). Of these various con-
cepts, the role of myth, metaphor, and collective social imaginaries are
essential in fleshing out the acts and practices of radical subjects.
Myths are often portrayed as a form of false consciousness, or
a regression to pre-modern or primitive forms of representation;
 Structure, Agency, and Affect 163

they are irrational, regressive, and dangerous (e.g., Adorno and

Horkheimer, 1973; Habermas, 1987). By contrast, for structuralists and
poststructuralists like Roland Barthes and Laclau, the role of myth is
not an irrational, negative, or primitive mode of apprehending the
world (Barthes, 1973). Indeed, for Laclau, ‘myth is constitutive of
any possible society’ (Laclau, 1990, p. 67). In this view, their pro-
duction and acceptance is intimately connected to the dislocation
and unevenness of social orders, because they provide creative ways
for subjects to make sense of their situation, to act in new ways,
and to construct new imaginaries and horizons. What is more, as
late modern societies are increasingly subject to greater and more
intense experiences of dislocation, they are consequently less fixed
and natural, and thus more constructed and contingent (Laclau, 1990,
pp. 60–84).
Speaking to these processes, Laclau outlines four loose propositions
about what I have termed the radical subject. First, he argues that the
radical subject is ‘a mythical subject’, where the work of myth is to repair
the dislocations experienced by subjects in particular situations by pro-
viding a new principle of reading of a situation. Ideas about a ‘promised
land’ or a ‘New Jerusalem’ are instances of myth in this sense: they
emerge in response to particular demands and grievances that are in turn
made possible by experiences of dislocation and disruption by provid-
ing new principles of reading, seeing, and interpretation (Laclau, 1990,
p. 60). Secondly, the subject is ‘constitutively metaphorical’ in that the new
myth often emerges as a critique of the ‘lack of structuration accompa-
nying the dominant order’ (Laclau, 1990, p. 62). In other words, myths
add something that is not literally present in a given situation, because
the latter has failed or been subverted. But this means that myths have
a dual function and a split identity. On the one hand, they embody a
literal content that represents the concrete responses to the failings of a
regime or practice. Yet at the same time this order also symbolizes ‘the
very principle of spatiality and structurality’ (Laclau, 1990, p. 62). The
metaphorical dimension thus arises because the new subject emerges in
the absence or failure of a given structure and the various meanings it
sustains.
Thirdly, the subject’s various ‘forms of identification function as surfaces
of inscription’ (Laclau, 1990, p. 63). In this sense, the subject becomes a
‘metaphor of an absent fullness’, which means that the concrete content
of its form of identification will function as the very representation of
all possible fullness. Moreover, if and when this representation achieves
some popular acceptance, it can be used as an ‘inverted form of represen-
tation of all possible kinds of structural dislocation’ (Laclau, 1990, p. 63).
164 Poststructuralism and After

Myths can hence function as surfaces of inscription on which various

dislocations and demands can be inscribed, though this surface is always
incomplete. But this means, fourthly, that the fluid and indeterminate
nature of these mythical ‘surfaces of inscription’ serve as the condition
of possibility for the constitution of ‘collective social imaginaries’. This
idea is predicated on the unstable relationship between any surface of
inscription and the various demands and identities that are inscribed
upon it. At this intersection, either the surface is hegemonized or it
is captured by what it represents, so that the surface is eliminated in
favour of literality. Or the opposite may occur: the moment of fullness
predominates and the surface becomes a space of representation upon
which any number of social demands and any possible dislocation can
be inscribed. If the latter occurs, myths are transformed into collective
social imaginaries that can serve as a discursive horizon for an entire
social formation (Laclau, 1990, pp. 63–7).

Affects, emotions, and the body

We see, therefore, the way in which the concept of a radical subjectiv-

ity can be connected to the production of new myths and collective
social imaginaries, whilst it also speaks to the impact of human agency
on social structures. But in fleshing out the topic of agency and subjec-
tivity there are still questions about the role of affect, emotion, bodily
enjoyments, and pleasures that require further consideration in this
approach. In traditional terms, the idea of affect speaks to the role of
emotions, feelings, and moods in our understanding and explanation of
human subjectivity. These topics have a rich history in social and polit-
ical thought, stretching back to Heidegger, Nietzsche, Hume, Spinoza,
and Augustine, as well as classical thought. In more recent discussions,
both the scope and significance of this theme has been considerably
widened, leading some commentators to speak of an ‘affective turn’ in
the social sciences and the humanities (Clough, 2007; Fischer, 2009).
As Michael Hardt puts it, in this shift of perspective affects refer ‘equally
to the body and the mind’, and ‘they involve both reason and the pas-
sions’. What is more, ‘affects enter the realm of causality’, though ‘they
offer a complex view of causality’ in that they ‘illuminate . . . both our
power to affect the world around us and our power to be affected by
it, along with the relationship between the two powers’ (Hardt, 2007,
p. viii).
Have poststructuralists got anything meaningful to contribute in this
area? Like many evaluations of this tradition of thinking, answers to
 Structure, Agency, and Affect 165

this question differ dramatically. Naturalists, critical realists, and some

materialists allege that poststructuralists are unable or unwilling to deal
with the role of bodies, emotions, and affects, because the latter are
reduced to texts, symbols, and linguistic structures. Representation thus
trumps bodily experiences and affective investments, so that the lat-
ter are sorely neglected. However, a closer inspection of the field shows
that numerous poststructuralists of various persuasions have been at the
forefront of the affective turn in the humanities and the social sciences
(e.g., Clough, 2007). They have thus been integrally involved in the
shift towards ‘a concern with forms of sensory experience which can-
not be understood in terms of semantic, linguistic or even rhetorical
categories’ (Gilbert, 2008, p. 31). Indeed, as Clough puts it, there has
been a notable change in poststructuralism about how the social body
is and ought to be figured, suggesting a broad movement ‘from a psy-
choanalytically informed criticism of subject identity, representation,
and trauma to an engagement with information and affect’ (Clough,
2007, p. 2).
In this shift, some have concentrated on the role of passions and
their connections with democratic politics. Others have drawn more
exclusively upon Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Deleuze to conceptualize the
theme of affect and to integrate the affective dimension into our under-
standing of subjectivity and social life. Another group of theorists have
drawn upon psychoanalysis, especially Lacan’s poststructuralist reading
of Freud, so as to focus on the body and its enjoyments. A final set
of theorists has combined some of these themes to explore particular
social and political phenomena, such as populism, nationalism, and
sexual oppression. In this section, I shall consider each of these explo-
rations, before distilling some common themes and elaborating some
future tasks for poststructuralist theorizing.

Politics and passions

Theorists such as Chantal Mouffe focus on the importance of passion to
rejuvenate contemporary democratic theory and practice. For her, the
concept of passion represents ‘a kind of placeholder for all those things
that cannot be reduced to interest or rationality’, and thus includes ‘fan-
tasies, desire, [and] all those things that a rationalist approach is unable
to understand in the very construction of human subjectivity and iden-
tity’ (Mouffe, 2002, p. 124). On a more overtly social and political level,
Mouffe connects her interest in the role of passions to the construction
of social imaginaries that structure social spaces and political identi-
ties. She argues that the very ‘need for a social imaginary’ implies that
166 Poststructuralism and After

people are not moved exclusively by ‘interests or rationality’ but what

she calls passion. She thus contrasts her emphasis on the need for a
social imaginary with ‘rationalists’, who do not believe in such concepts,
but ‘believe that people need to find ways to act rationally according to
their interests in a rational choice model or to find moral universal rules
in another model’. Mouffe thus distances herself from those rationalist
approaches that ignore the importance of symbols or the social ‘con-
struction of personality’, thereby neglecting the way human identities
are fashioned in different contexts by various discursive mechanisms
(Mouffe, 2002, p. 124).
Mouffe harnesses the role of passion to forge a more intense con-
cept of ‘the political’, which valorizes the construction and expression
of antagonisms amongst differently positioned groups and subjects. Her
concept of the political thus differs from ‘politics’, where the latter refers
to ‘the ensemble of practices, discourses and institutions which seek to
establish a certain order and organize human coexistence’, though the
latter occur in contexts that are ‘always potentially conflictual’ because
they are affected by the former (Mouffe, 2000a, p. 101). In this way, her
critique of aggregative and rationalist accounts of democratic politics,
as well her criticism of more concrete political ideologies like the Third
Way or New Labour, which sought to transcend the difference between
the Old Left and the New Right in the name of pragmatism or ‘the end
of ideology’, hinges on the need for clear ideological divisions between
parties and movements. The latter are based on different interpretations
of the principles and values of liberal democracy. Values like freedom
and equality are thus the source of different discursive articulations, and
they provide the basis for the elaboration of different ideologies along a
Left-Right spectrum.
Yet, in developing this perspective in a way that is compatible with
democratic politics, and which does not lapse into a pre-pluralist
and potentially authoritarian style of politics, as exemplified by Carl
Schmitt’s definition of politics in terms of a sharp ‘friend-enemy’ opposi-
tion (Schmitt, 1996), Mouffe introduces the concept of agonism. As she
puts it,

Antagonism is struggle between enemies, while agonism is struggle

between adversaries. We can therefore reformulate our problem by
saying that envisaged from the perspective of ‘agonistic pluralism’
the aim of democratic politics is to transform antagonism into
agonism. This requires providing channels through which collec-
tive passions will be given ways to express themselves over issues
 Structure, Agency, and Affect 167

which, while allowing enough possibility for identification, will not

construct the opponent as an enemy but an adversary.
(Mouffe, 2000a, pp. 102–3)

In short, therefore, in developing what she calls a project for ‘agonistic

pluralism’, the main task of democratic politics is not

to eliminate passions or to relegate them to the private sphere in

order to establish a rational consensus in the public sphere. Rather,
it is to ‘tame’ those passions by mobilizing them towards demo-
cratic designs. It is necessary to understand that far from jeopardizing
democracy, agonistic confrontation is in fact its very condition of
possibility.
(Mouffe, 2000b, p. 149)

Passionate attachments
Mouffe thus stresses the role of passions, fantasies, and collective social
imaginaries to rejuvenate democratic theory. But she does not explicate
her concept of passion, nor does she spell out the theoretical founda-
tions of her approach. Other theorists have sought to develop more
explicit conceptions of passion and affect by drawing on Nietzsche,
Marx, Derrida, Foucault, and various psychoanalytic theorists. For exam-
ple, in an essay entitled ‘Wounded Attachments’ (and more extended
reflections in her book States of Injury), Wendy Brown has criticized some
proponents of ‘identity politics’ for identifying themselves with their
own positions of subordination, thus perpetuating destructive forms of
self-subjugation (Brown, 1993). Rather than challenging the structures
of racial, gendered, or sexual domination associated with liberal capital-
ism, the assertion of racial, sexual, or ethnic particularities or identities
become invested in their ‘own subjection’ (Brown, 1993, p. 403).
Finding inspiration in Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment as a reac-
tive affect – ‘the moralizing revenge of the powerless, the triumph of
the weak as weak’ as she puts it (Brown, 1993, p. 400) – as well as
Connolly’s employment of this notion to challenge dominant models
of liberal political philosophy, Brown characterizes the resultant forms
of subjective identification as ‘wounded attachments’:

In its emergence as a protest against marginalization or subordina-

tion, politicized identity thus becomes attached to its own exclusion
both because it is premised on this exclusion for its very exis-
tence as identity and because the formation of identity at the site
168 Poststructuralism and After

of exclusion, as exclusion, augments or ‘alters the direction of the

suffering’ entailed in subordination or marginalization by finding a
site of blame for it. But in so doing, it installs its pain over its unre-
deemed history in the very foundation of its political claim, in its
demand for recognition as identity. In locating a site of blame for its
powerlessness over its past, as a past of injury, a past as a hurt will,
and locating a ‘reason’ for the ‘unendurable pain’ of social power-
lessness in the present, it converts this reasoning into an ethicizing
politics, a politics of recrimination that seeks to avenge the hurt even
while it reaffirms it, discursively codifies it.
(Brown, 1993, p. 406)

Wounded attachments arise out of the paradoxes of political liberalism –

‘the sufferings of a subordinated sovereign subject’ (Brown, 1993,
p. 400) – and what she calls a ‘rupture’ in the late modern ‘prob-
lematic of history’. More precisely, her posited ‘erosion of historical
metanarratives takes with them both laws of history and the futurity
such laws purported to assure’, so that ‘the presumed continuity of
history is replaced with a sense of its violent, contingent, and ubiqui-
tous force’ (Brown, 1993, p. 404). In short, then, ‘identity politics’ is
structured by ressentiment, because it ‘reverses without subverting’ the
‘blaming structure’ in which different subjects are implicated (Brown,
1993, p. 403).
What is more, in making these claims, Brown problematizes an overly
optimistic affirmation of ‘identity politics’, which she argues has the
effect of renaturalizing capitalism and thereby excluding class politics.
She thus asks

to what extent a critique of capitalism is foreclosed by the current

configuration of oppositional politics, and not simply by the ‘loss
of the socialist alternative’ or the ostensible ‘triumph of liberalism’
in the global order. In contrast with the Marxist critique of a social
whole and Marxist vision of social transformation, to what extent do
identity politics require a standard internal to existing society against
which to pitch their claims, a standard that not only preserves capi-
talism from critique, but sustains the invisibility and inarticulateness
of class – not incidentally, but endemically? Could we have stumbled
upon one reason why class is invariably named but rarely theo-
rized or developed in the multicultural mantra, ‘race, class, gender,
sexuality’?
(Brown, 1993, p. 395)
 Structure, Agency, and Affect 169

I shall return to the different ways in which ‘identity politics’ and ‘class
politics’ are contrasted, as well as the disputes between those who advo-
cate the politics of recognition and redistribution in Chapter 7, where
I focus on different ways of conceptualizing and evaluating the politics
of identity/difference, as well as the relationship between interests and
identity.
Along with Nietzsche, Brown stresses the importance of emotions
and passions in our ethical and political life, though in the case of
contemporary identity politics she cautions against the poisoning and
self-defeating character of affects like resentment. Judith Butler has gen-
eralized and developed some of these ideas by talking about the role
of ‘passionate attachments’ as a vital underpinning of what she terms
the ‘psychic life of power’ (Butler, 1997). Like Brown, Butler’s starting
point is Foucault’s paradoxical idea of assujetissement – the notion of
‘subjectification’ or ‘subjectivization’ – in which ‘the subject is consti-
tuted through practices of subjection’ (Foucault, cited in Lloyd, 2007,
p. 64). In The Psychic Life of Power, Butler problematizes this ambigu-
ous logic of subjectivity and subjugation by inquiring into the psychic
character of power, and then exploring its ramifications for individual
identity and existence, and the possibility of political practices (Butler,
1997, p. 17). This taps into her long-standing concern with questions
of agency and social change, in which subjects are both enmeshed in
certain norms and practices, yet still able to make a difference by reiter-
ating the open-textured rules within which they find themselves (e.g.,
Butler, 1990; 1993).
Here, though, the issue is focussed on the psychic formation of the
subject. Part of Butler’s account arises from her critique of Althusser’s
theory of ideology, where the latter involves a series of practices that
turn individuals into subjects via the mechanism of interpellation.
Althusser envisages the operation of interpellation by imagining a
policemen calling out the words ‘Hey, you there!’ to someone running
away; and when the latter turns towards the voice of authority he is
literally ‘hailed’ or ‘constituted’ as a subject (Althusser, 1971, p. 174).
But along with other critics of Althusser, such as Paul Hirst, she raises
questions about the status of the subject before its interpellation (Hirst,
1979). Does Althusser not presuppose a subject that exists prior to its
interpellation? More precisely, Butler questions the force that leads the
individual to respond to the voice of authority or the law, thus turning
himself or herself into a subject, arguing that the Althusserian problem-
atic provides no explanation for this logic. By contrast, her alternative
account centres on the role of guilt in causing the ‘subject’ to turn
170 Poststructuralism and After

towards the voice of the law. It is because the subject is already marked
by guilt that its conscience produces the bodily response to the voice
of the policeman. What this means, she argues, is that the individual
has already been subjected to a pre-existing psychic operation of power,
in which it has become both self-conscious and self-subjugating (Lloyd,
2007, pp. 98–9).
Butler’s psychic theory of power and subjectivity is complex, though
it is possible to disentangle various dimensions. The first aspect concerns
the importance of primary human dependency, in which in infancy
‘all subjects develop a passionate attachment to those on whom they
depend for life’ (Lloyd, 2007, p. 99). This ‘primary passion’ is impor-
tant not only for the subject’s material and psychic well-being, but
it also ‘conditions the political formation and regulation of subjects’,
thus serving as their means of subjection (Butler, 1997, p. 8). The sec-
ond dimension revolves around the process of ‘foreclosure’, which in
Butler’s view is closely connected to the experience of melancholia:
‘the condition of uncompleted grief’ (Butler, 1997, p. 23). Accepting
Freud’s distinction between repression and foreclosure, in which ‘a
repressed desire might once have lived apart from its prohibition, but
that foreclosed desire is rigorously barred’, Butler argues that the lat-
ter constitutes the subject ‘through a certain kind of preemptive loss’
(Butler, 1997, p. 23). For example, she argues that it is the ‘foreclosure
of homosexuality’ that founds the production of ‘a certain heterosexual
version of the subject’ (Butler, 1997, p. 23).
The third and final component is connected more directly to melan-
cholia. In this regard, she builds on her analysis of guilt and conscience
to show various ways in which the subject’s forms of reflexivity are the
products of foreclosure, prohibition, and the incorporation of the other
into its ego (Lloyd, 2007, p. 100). Butler thus seeks to connect the role of
power and social regulation with the psychic formation of the subject,
in which she argues that the psychic sphere is structured by the dom-
inant ‘norms of social regulation’ (Butler, 1997, p. 100). Her argument
here is that the way in which the subjects of melancholia attempt to deal
with their lost objects – the internalization of the various affects (love,
hate, or anger) that are harboured in relation to them – is not immune
from the prevalent social norms. On the contrary, as the melancholic
berates and judges itself excessively, it necessarily relies upon the pub-
licly available means of communication, and the latter are laced with
the dominant norms, as well as a ‘particular configuration of the social
world as well’ (Butler, 1997, p. 181). In an important respect, then, the
role of conscience as a social institution that produces a self-critical
 Structure, Agency, and Affect 171

subject replicates the way social agencies make judgements about the
practices of social actors. But Butler also argues that the strength of the
subject’s conscience is intimately linked to the logic by which social
power determines which losses might be grieved and which might not
(Butler, 1997, p. 183). (The social configuration of power thus seems to
determine which forms of conscience and exclusion are possible and
occur.) The exaggerated conscience of the melancholic is thus a product
of the state’s authority in regulating grief, though this role is disguised
by the logic of internalization (Lloyd, 2007, p. 101).
In short, therefore, Butler seeks to weave together the psychic and
sociopolitical dimensions of subjectivity in a way that mediates between
the universal and ahistorical theory of subjectivity associated with psy-
choanalysis, and the more historicist and nominalistic accounts put
forward by Foucault and others. However, the ‘compromise forma-
tion’ she engineers between a transcendental universalism and a radical
historicism is not without difficulty or critics (e.g., Chambers, 2007;
Copjec, 1994b; Disch, 1999). Moya Lloyd has usefully identified at least
two problems with Butler’s account. On the one hand, Butler problema-
tizes the notion of subjective autonomy by stressing the importance of
loss and the fact that the production of subjectivity presumes an identifi-
cation with the lost object (and thus something other than the subject);
what is more, for the subject to survive it must affirm, rather than dis-
avow, ‘the trace of loss that inaugurates one’s own emergence’ (Butler,
cited in Lloyd, 2007, p. 101). Yet what remains unclear is how Butler’s
account makes provision for subjective agency, as there are only hints
about the way in which the ‘trauma of subjection’ can enable subjects to
act differently by resignifying the traumatic experiences of foreclosure
and exclusion that founds them in the first place. What is more, Butler’s
long-standing project of reconfiguring certain social norms (such as
those pertaining to the governance of sexuality) appears to threaten the
psychic stability and existence of the subject.
On the other hand, there are queries about Butler’s commitment to an
all-pervasive kind of existential desire in her theory of psychic subjec-
tivity, which she derives from Spinoza’s philosophy. At various places
in The Psychic Life of Power, Butler invokes a generalized ‘desire for
existence’ that seems to pre-exist all historically and socially variable
forms of political subjection and regulation. This issue highlights a ten-
sion between the transcendental and historicist dimensions of Butler’s
approach, for her account appears divided between the claim that all
subjects are orientated around Spinoza’s notion that desire is always the
desire to persist in one’s own being, and her critique of all forms of
172 Poststructuralism and After

transcendental thinking that posits invariant forms and structures that

resist history and variable construction (Butler, 1997, p. 28). In short,
just as Butler criticizes Althusser’s theory of interpellation for presup-
posing a subject marked by a socially inflected guilt or conscience, so
she seems to smuggle a pre-discursive and asocial substantial form and
desire into her psychic theory of the subject. This issue renders explicit
the ongoing question about the character and status of affects, bodies,
and emotions, on the one hand, and the cultural settings in which they
are activated and operate on the other.

Deleuze, complexity, and neuroscience

Mouffe, Brown, and Butler have thus inserted the role of passion
and affect deep into their respective theories of subjectivity, politics,
domination, and normativity. Yet other theorists have elaborated dif-
ferent conceptions of affect and passion, whilst applying these notions
to particular problems. One set of philosophers and theorists in the
Deleuzian tradition of poststructuralist theorizing draw upon Spinoza
and Nietzsche to foreground the ‘affective dimension’ of human sub-
jectivity and the ‘visceral register’ of social life. The work of William
Connolly exemplifies this approach in social and political theory (see
also Hardt and Negri, 2000; Massumi, 2002). In Neuropolitics and other
more recent writings, Connolly draws on Spinoza, Nietzsche, Deleuze,
and Guattari, as well as recent advances in neuroscience and complex-
ity theory, to stress the importance of ressentiment and the various ‘layers
of the body/brain/culture network’ to explain our subjective identifica-
tions and social practices in late capitalist societies (Connolly, 2002a;
2005a; 2008a). Embracing Nietzsche’s desire to incorporate ‘the ubiqui-
tous role of affect inside perception, thinking, and judgement’, as well
as the later Foucault’s emphasis on various ‘technologies of the self’,
Connolly endeavours to reorient cultural theory in a more realist and
naturalist direction (Connolly, 2002a, p. 68).
His resultant commitment to a philosophy of ‘immanent naturalism’
has a number of implications for the character and conduct of social
theory. In the first instance, the stress on affects, passions, corporeal
dispositions, and the multiple circuits and relays of the various regions
of the brain system, is designed to challenge a ‘mechanical determin-
ism’, which is based on the search for law-like explanations, as well
as a ‘bland intellectualism’ that omits the ‘affective sources, somatic
entanglements, and effects’ of thinking and cognition (Connolly, 2002a,
pp. 64, 1). The emphasis on emotions and the ‘visceral register’ is
thus directed at the overly rationalistic and instrumental explanations
of mainstream social science, whose explanations and predictions are
 Structure, Agency, and Affect 173

usually couched in terms of ‘material interests’, ‘subjective preferences’,

or ‘disembodied behaviour’.
But this methodological stricture also leads him to elaborate a dif-
ferent way of thinking about politics, ethics, and democracy. Here
Connolly emphasizes the role of ‘micropolitics’ and ‘relational tech-
niques of the self’, which he borrows from Deleuze and Foucault
respectively, to enlarge the scope of ethical inquiry and political prac-
tice. By ‘relational techniques of the self’, he refers to ‘choreographed
mixtures of word, gesture, image, sound, rhythm, smell, and touch
that help to define the sensibility in which your perceptions, thinking,
identity, beliefs, and judgment are set’, whilst he defines micropolitics
(following Deleuze) as ‘a cultural collectivization and politicization of
arts of the self’ (Connolly, 2002a, pp. 20, 108).1 Micropolitics include
‘techniques organized and deployed collectively by professional associ-
ations, mass media talk shows, TV and film dramas, military training,
work processes, neighbourhood gangs, church meetings, school assem-
blies, sports events, charitable organizations, commercial advertising,
child rearing, judicial practice, and police routines’ (Connolly, 2002a,
p. 21). It operates ‘below the threshold of large legislative acts and execu-
tive initiatives, even as it ranges widely and sets conditions of possibility
for these more visible actions’ (Connolly, 2002a, p. 21). Institutions
are not ‘exhausted by micropolitics’, yet this affective dimension of
social life is powerful because of its key function in ‘organizing attach-
ments, consumption possibilities, work routines, faith practices, child
rearing, education, investment, security, and punishment’ (Connolly,
2002a, p. 21).
When fleshed out with an existential ‘gratitude for the abundance
of life’, an ‘attachment to the world’, or ‘care for being’, which
he finds in Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Foucault, and when combined
with various ‘tactics of the self’, Connolly uses his revised under-
standing of the visceral register to cultivate a particular ‘ethical sen-
sibility’ that challenges teleological, Kantian, and secular models of
morality (Connolly, 2002a, p. 105). This ethical sensibility or ethos
affirms a commitment to a deep, multidimensional pluralism, under-
pins his proposals for alternative ‘interim visions’ dedicated to the
construction of an ‘eco-egalitarian capitalism’, and lends support to
what he calls a ‘politics of becoming’ (Connolly, 2008a). His elab-
oration of an ‘immanent naturalism’ thus leads him to ask differ-
ent questions in the domain of moral and ethical theory: not ‘Why
should I be moral?’, but ‘How do you cultivate presumptive respon-
siveness and generosity in a pluralistic culture?’ (Connolly, 2002a,
p. 105). His answer resides in both intensive work on the self, and
174 Poststructuralism and After

in projecting this ethos into the wider public domain (Connolly,

1999, p. 28).

Psychoanalytic perspectives
Other poststructuralists draw primarily on the resources of psycho-
analysis to incorporate the bodily and affective dimensions into their
theories of subjectivity and identity. In this regard, Slavoj Žižek, Joan
Copjec, and Yannis Stavrakakis extend Lacan’s ‘return to Freud’ to
supplement what they claim is the overly linguistic and overly his-
toricist models of subjectivity associated with some interpretations
of poststructuralism (Copjec, 1994a; Stavrakakis, 2007; Žižek, 1989).
The key figure in this regard is Žižek, who seeks to complement the
purely discursive dimension of ideology critique, which aims at ‘a
“symptomal reading” of the ideological text’ by ‘bringing about the
“deconstruction” of the spontaneous experience of its meaning’, with
a stronger emphasis on the way in which a subject, when in the
thrall of a certain ideology, derives a ‘surplus-enjoyment’ from its
symbolic and imaginary identifications (Žižek, 1989, p. 125). Devel-
oping Althusser’s idea of ‘interpellation’, which is the key mechanism
in his approach for turning individuals into subjects, Žižek empha-
sizes a ‘logic of enjoyment’ that is ‘beyond interpellation’, and which
articulates ‘the way in which – beyond the field of meaning but at
the same time internal to it – an ideology implies, manipulates, pro-
duces a pre-ideological enjoyment structured in fantasy’ (Žižek, 1989,
p. 125).
Žižek employs the concept of enjoyment and its attendant affects like
fear, anger, ‘pleasure in displeasure’, and so forth, to analyse ideologies
like fascism, liberalism, and nationalism. For example, he argues that
national identities are not exhausted by our symbolic identifications
with certain beliefs or values, as this focus occludes our ‘shared relation-
ship toward a Thing, toward Enjoyment incarnated’ (Žižek, 1990, p. 51).
This paradoxical ‘Nation-Thing’ is radically particular to a nation – only
its members grasp what it is – though it is also threatened by others,
who wish to ‘steal’ their enjoyment. National identification is thus an
‘empty tautology’ that simply names a heterogeneous series of proper-
ties that constitute a particular ‘way of life’ – customs, rituals, festivals,
experiences, and so on – through which a community ‘organizes its
enjoyment’. In Žižek’s words, our ‘relationship toward the Thing, struc-
tured by our fantasies, is what is at stake when we speak of the menace to
our “way of life” presented by the Other: it is what is threatened when,
for example, a white Englishman is panicked because of the presence of
 Structure, Agency, and Affect 175

“aliens” ’ (Žižek, 1990, p. 52). Finally, in elaborating this approach, Žižek

opposes his perspective with a ‘discursive idealism’ that reduces ‘the
(national, etc.) Cause to a performative effect of the discursive practices
that refer to it’, because the latter ‘doesn’t have enough “substance” to
exert the attraction proper to a Cause’ (Žižek, 1990, p. 52). By contrast,
he goes on to stress that ‘the Lacanian term for the strange “substance”
that must be added to enable a Cause to obtain its positive ontological
consistency – the only “substance” acknowledged by psychoanalysis –
is, of course, enjoyment’ (Žižek, 1990, pp. 52–3).
Such ideas have been taken up by other Lacanian-inflected accounts.
For example, in The Lacanian Left, Stavrakakis analyses pressing issues
such as the grip of consumerism, the pathologies of nationalism, the
difficulties surrounding the construction of a positive European identity,
and the current disaffection with democracy in many liberal democratic
societies by building upon the later Lacan’s emphasis on the central
place of negativity in social life. For Lacan, negativity is understood in
terms of the presence of what he calls ‘the Real’ that resists symboliza-
tion and shows the limits of any representation or symbolic order. This
irreducible dimension of negativity in social practices discloses itself
in the form of dislocations, crises, and social antagonisms that disrupt
identities and regimes, though Stavrakakis insists that ‘it is possible to
enact the symbolic gestures, the modes of positivisation, that can encir-
cle these moments of showing or resurfacing of the real’ (Stavrakakis,
2007, p. 11).
A central theme of The Lacanian Left thus hinges on the effort to con-
struct a grammar of Lacanian notions that respects the in-built tensions
between negativity and positivity, without reducing one of the poles to
the other, or without reconciling the two poles in a dialectical synthesis.
This attempt to elaborate a ‘non-dialectical negativity’ involves deli-
cate negotiations between a range of theoretical positions (Stavrakakis,
2007, p. 126). More specifically, Stavrakakis draws attention to the way
in which Cornelius Castoriadis stresses the positive creative value of
‘radical imagination’, whilst disavowing the negativity of alienation.
On the other hand, Laclau’s ‘largely eclectic use of Lacanian insights’
(Stavrakakis, 2007, p. 83) in developing his theory of discourse embraces
the negative ontology of Lacanian theory, only to neglect ‘the posi-
tive aspects of the real as jouissance’ (or enjoyment), without which ‘the
whole Lacanian theory loses most of its explanatory force’ (Stavrakakis,
2007, p. 77). The work of the later Žižek and Badiou is also caught in a
dialectics of disavowal, though its limits are exposed more on the terrain
of political praxis, where Lacanian negativity tends to be replaced by ‘a
176 Poststructuralism and After

positive politics of the event/act as miracle’ (Stavrakakis, 2007, p. 18), so

that politics takes a dangerously decisionistic or voluntarist form.
Instead, Stavrakakis seeks to mediate the tensions between negativity
and positivity by articulating Laclau’s symbolic theory of discourse and
‘the Lacanian problematic of jouissance’, which Žižek has endeavoured
to foreground over the years (Stavrakakis, 2007, p. 181). The Lacanian
concept of jouissance, or ‘the enjoyment factor’ to use Žižek’s apt term,
refers to the ‘unconscious energy, difficult to displace, which invests dis-
pleasure with a pleasurable quality’, and is thus designed to capture the
paradoxical satisfaction that the subject procures from its symptoms
and attachments (Stavrakakis, 2007, p. 181). In short, therefore, the
centrepiece of Stavrakakis’s more positive argument is that resistances
to social change, especially the grip of certain ideologies and identi-
fications, and the complex dynamics of social and political change,
can only be thoroughly explained by taking account of the role of the
‘unconscious energy’ and bodily jouissance. Without taking this aspect
into account, poststructuralists are unable to account for the ‘force’ of a
subject’s ideological investments.
In normative and critical terms, Stavrakakis endeavours to outline
an appropriate kind of enjoyment that is compatible with democratic
values and institutions, whilst also re-invigorating citizen involvement
and ‘inspiring high passions’. His solution here is to avoid fundamental-
ist fantasies, which seek to transcend negativity and antagonism in the
name of a utopian politics that achieves complete harmony or rational
consensus, as well as the various versions of post-democracy that turn
politics into a purely technocratic administration of things. Instead, he
sees in the project of radical democracy and democratic practices the
prospect of meaningful political contestation and passionate engage-
ment. The key here is to cultivate and instil the right sort of jouissance:
an ethos which avoids both the phallic enjoyment of power, as well as
the utopia of full enjoyment, whilst affirming a non-phallic (or ‘non-all’)
partial enjoyment. As Stavrakakis puts it, democratic subjects should
learn to ‘really enjoy’ their ‘partial enjoyment’, so that a critical ethico-
political task involves the fostering of ‘an enjoyable democratic ethics
of the political’ (Stavrakakis, 2007, p. 269).

Populism, affect, and radical investments

Finally, Ernesto Laclau also endeavours to incorporate the affective
dimension of social practices into his post-Marxist theory of hegemony.
The first inkling of this move is evident in his rebuttal of charges that
his poststructuralist reading of Marxism suffered a ‘normative deficit’
 Structure, Agency, and Affect 177

(Critchley, 2004). In this reading, it is alleged that Laclau provides a

purely descriptive concept of hegemony that enables him to analyse
and characterize particular social formations, which eschews the elab-
oration of a clear normative stance, though he is still wont to criticize
various relations of domination and oppression in the name of alterna-
tive ideals and values. Laclau’s response to this criticism is to rework
the usual opposition between the descriptive and factual features of
a statement or social practice, whilst elaborating a distinctive concept
of ‘the ethical’ (Laclau, 2000). He thus distinguishes between what he
calls descriptive/normative complexes, in which fact and value are inter-
mixed, and the ethical dimension, where the latter is understood as a
moment in which the universality or ‘impossible fullness’ of a practice
or society becomes evident because of a dislocatory event that cannot
be symbolized and repaired within an existing order. This absent full-
ness is disclosed in the course of a global financial crisis, for example,
or a revolutionary conjuncture in which state power is weakened and
challenged. What is more, as I have noted, because there is no logical
passage from ‘an unavoidable ethical moment’, in which the fullness of
society manifests itself as an empty symbol, to the construction of an
alternative normative order, the ethical also involves a moment of ‘rad-
ical investment’ in which subjects identify with a new ‘ethical object’,
such as the myth of a Promised Land or a New Jerusalem (Laclau, 2000,
pp. 80–1). The idea of an ‘ethical investment’ thus takes the form of a
subjective decision for those immersed in particular practices and social
relations. This means that the value of the decision, and the reasons
subjects give for it, cannot be reached or assessed in a purely theoretical
fashion by ‘somebody conceived as a pure mind outside any order’; the
subject is thus embodied and radically contextual (Laclau, 2000, p. 85).
By developing the idea of ‘the ethical’ in terms of an embodied
subject’s radical investment in a new object that promises an impos-
sible fullness, Laclau begins to make explicit the affective dimension
of social practices in his approach. This emphasis emerges even more
explicitly in his more recent account of populism, which is elabo-
rated in his On Populist Reason (Laclau, 2005). Here he foregrounds
the role of what he calls ‘radical investment’ or affect in social life so
as to capture the force of our subjective attachments to particular sig-
nifiers and objects (Laclau, 2005, p. 110). Drawing parallels between
his neo-Gramscian theory of hegemony and psychoanalysis, especially
the logic of the object petit a, which has been developed by Lacan,
Žižek, and Copjec, Laclau stresses the way in which ‘a certain partic-
ularity . . . assumes the role of an impossible universality’ (Laclau, 2005,
178 Poststructuralism and After

p. 115). In other words, a certain partial object assumes the dignity of ‘a

Thing’ – thereby embodying the whole – which serves as an (impos-
sible) point of ‘passionate attachment’. Moreover, whilst this radical
investment in a cathected object is radically contingent, for nothing
predetermines the fact that one signifier performs this role, ‘once a cer-
tain part has assumed such a function’, it retains a grip that ‘cannot
be changed at will’; indeed, ‘it is its very materiality as a part which
becomes a source of enjoyment’, thus ‘making an object the embodi-
ment of a mythical fullness’ (Laclau, 2005, p. 115). This means, in short,
that the logic of populist hegemony is ‘nothing more than the invest-
ment, in a partial object, of a fullness which will always evade us because
it is purely mythical’ (Laclau, 2005, p. 116).

Poststructuralism and affect

The affective turn in recent poststructuralist thinking is thus rich and
diverse. Yet it is still possible to discern common themes in these
assorted interventions. In the first place, the stress on affects, passions,
feelings, images, rhythms, corporeal dispositions, and even the multiple
connections between different regions of the brain, is designed to con-
test exclusively rationalist and intellectualist orientations to social and
political theory. As against those approaches that privilege rationality
and intellectualism, Connolly argues that ‘intellectualism is constitutively
insufficient to ethics’, so that ‘no final moral source to date has ever been
vindicated so consummately that all reasonable people find themselves com-
manded by intellect or revelation to accept it’ (Connolly, 2002a, p. 111.)
Such rationalist and intellectualist prejudices often seep into our dom-
inant models of normative theorizing, especially with respect to our
moral theory and our dominant models of democracy, as well as our
critical explanations of social actions, institutions, and structures.
Secondly, on a more positive note, the affective turn also enables
poststructuralists to rework their preferred conceptions of ethics and
democracy. Ethics from this point of view is not reducible to the for-
mulation of, and adherence to, universal moral laws or categorical
imperatives that are based on a pure practical reason. Nor is it reducible
to utilitarian thinking, and the consequentialist forms of moral rea-
soning it supports, or the emphasis on virtue ethics. Instead, ethics is
about how we are to live (together) as subjects, as well as our invest-
ments in particular ideals and ways of life. More precisely, it is about
the articulation of a set of dispositions and practices that can remain
attentive to new possibilities, whilst enabling the passionate expression
of differences.
 Structure, Agency, and Affect 179

In a similar fashion, Connolly, Mouffe, and others have employed

their emphasis on the role of passions, affects, and the visceral regis-
ter to challenge the dominant aggregative and deliberative models of
democracy. As their respective names suggest, the aggregative model,
originating in the writings of Joseph Schumpeter and Anthony Downs,
focusses on the adding together of the different interests and prefer-
ences of citizens who choose public officials and policies via practices
of voting and/or through the combination of individual preferences
into winning coalitions in formally democratic systems. The delibera-
tive model places emphasis on the role of different parties or reasonable
agents reaching a ‘rational consensus’ via a process of open discussion
and the exchange of views under conditions of freedom and equal-
ity (Young, 2000, pp. 19–25). By contrast, the supporters of ‘agonistic
democracy’ (such as Connolly, Honig, Mouffe, Owen, Tully, and oth-
ers) enlist the visceral register and the role of passions to develop an
agonistic model of democracy that relies upon an alternative democratic
ethos. The articulation and dissemination of an alternative ethos, which
is built on virtues such as ‘agonistic respect’ and ‘presumptive generos-
ity’, thus provides a way of developing a conception of democracy that
is responsive to differences, pluralization, and ‘the politics of becoming’,
whilst simultaneously seeking to affirm the expression and channelling
of ‘passionate attachments’, including religious identifications, into the
public arena (Howarth, 2008).
Finally, the emphasis on emotions, affects, and unconscious invest-
ments enables poststructrualists to develop better critical explanations
of various ideological identifications and ethical investments. For exam-
ple, Connolly has employed his focus on the visceral register to rethink
the liberal consensus on secularism, to push for a pluralization of
pluralism, and to open liberal democratic principles and norms to
what he calls the politics of becoming. He has also shown how his
conceptions of ‘micropolitics’ and ‘arts of the self’, especially in the
fields of media and culture, furnish vital resources to critically explain
the emergence, formation, grip, and limits of political projects like
the ‘evangelical-capitalist resonance machine’, which has dominated
US politics in recent times (Connolly, 2008a). Mouffe employs the
concept of passion to criticize liberal political philosophers (such as
Habermas and Rawls), who denude the political in their respective
philosophies, whilst also problematizing political projects that seek a
complacent consensus or purely technical solutions to political prob-
lems through recourse to Third Way politics and affirmations of the
‘radical centre’ (Mouffe, 2005, pp. 60–3). And, lastly, the notions of
180 Poststructuralism and After

fantasy, fantasmatic attachments, and fantasmatic narratives have been

used to explain the grip and sedimentation of various forms of nation-
alism and ethnic identification (such as those found in apartheid
discourse and Greek nationalism), as well policy regimes and workplace
identities (Glynos, 2008a; 2008b; Glynos and Howarth, 2007; Griggs and
Howarth, 2013; Stavrakakis, 2007, pp. 203–5).
In each of these areas, poststructuralists have emphasized the role of
passions, feelings, and emotions in critically explaining aspects of social
life. Indeed, they have enhanced the set of tools we have to explore
this dimension, whilst setting down different theoretical settings within
which they can be viewed. Yet it is also clear that there are still signifi-
cant differences between and within these perspectives. One important
dividing line here is between those who position affect, emotions, and
the body within discourse; those that see in them an extra- or pre-
discursive domain of objects and forces that are extrinsic to discourse;
and those that seek to steer a Third Way between these opposed points
of view. Laclau and Mouffe, for example, insist that affects, bodily
enjoyments, and libidinal investments arise within discourse, whereas
Connolly and others view affects as beyond discourse, which is in keep-
ing with his naturalistic and realist standpoint. Butler wishes to locate
affects such as guilt and resentment within the symbolic order, in which
she stresses their historicity and social construction, though her allusion
to a universal ‘desire for existence’ points her in a different direction.
Similarly, in keeping with his more Catholic stance, Stavrakakis situates
his intervention within the poststructuralist tradition, yet the pervasive
rhetoric of his text insinuates an opposition between Lacanian psycho-
analysis and poststructuralist discourse theory. Thus, for example, in The
Lacanian Left the concept of discourse is generally rendered synonymous
with notions like the symbolic, meaning, representation, signification,
semiotic differences, language, text, linguistic difference, and so forth;
indeed, Stavrakakis argues that the poststructuralist emphasis on mean-
ing and the ‘law of fluidity’ has to be supplemented with the stress on
jouissance and affect (e.g., Stavrakakis, 2007, pp. 20–1, 81, 105).
Of course, in adjudicating between these various perspectives, much
depends on the way that the concepts of discourse and the symbolic
order are defined and employed. For Connolly and Stavrakakis, dis-
course is synonymous with language, meaning, and representation, and
so it is natural for them to locate affects as extra-discursive or non-
discursive components of social and political life and then seek to
incorporate their particular imports for critical explanation. But at the
same time it is critical to note that this characterization runs counter
 Structure, Agency, and Affect 181

to an elementary assumption in Laclau and Mouffe’s materialist the-

ory of discourse, in which a discursive structure is not just a cognitive
or contemplative entity, but an articulatory practice that constitutes and
organizes social relations (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, p. 96). It may be the
case that Laclau and Mouffe’s conception of discursive practices ought
to include a stronger emphasis on passion, affect, enjoyment, uncon-
scious energies, and so on, but this would not be incompatible with
the category of discourse itself, nor with much poststructuralist the-
ory either. In short, then, in my view, the turn to affects, unconscious
energies, bodily pleasures, and so forth are important dimensions of
poststructuralist theory; what is more, they are elements of social life
that arise within particular symbolic orders.
Allied to this tricky ontological question about the status of affect
are connected epistemological and methodological issues. Such issues
revolve around the difficult task of acquiring data on the role and impact
of affects, and the visceral register on social life, as well as making
judgements and evaluations about such data that can be justifiable and
persuasive. Recent advances in neuroscience and complexity theory sup-
ply Deleuzian theorists like Connolly and Romand Coles with important
indicators about the connection between the visceral register and partic-
ular forms of politics. But these advances need further methodological
and epistemological development, as well as empirical studies that can
confirm and augment these initial forays. The same can be said about
psychoanalytic perspectives. Here one of the central questions concerns
the conceptual relationship between libidinal investment/bodily jouis-
sance, on the one hand, and discourse and representation, on the other,
as well as the empirical investigation of this nexus in specific cases. How
is one able to empirically track these embodied and ‘enjoying’ aspects
of subjectivity and identification – the ‘real as jouissance’ (Stavrakakis,
2007, p. 16) – and then incorporate them into critical explanations
of social and political phenomena? What counts as evidence for its
presence, and how are these ‘presences’ and effects explored in partic-
ular historical contexts? It is striking that most of the evidence that
Stavrakakis cites in his critical explanations of nationalism and con-
sumerism is primarily textual and ‘linguistic’ in form: it consists of
newspaper headlines from the tabloid press, advertising slogans (e.g.,
‘Enjoy Coca-Cola’), or extant secondary texts. In short, a critical prob-
lem provoked by The Lacanian Left is how the psychoanalytic researcher
moves from the couch, the library, and the study – as well as the con-
cern with psychic phenomena and processes – into the wider field of
social practices and political activities, and how psychoanalytic theory
182 Poststructuralism and After

can help to produce compelling and empirically convincing narratives

of problematized phenomena. Answers to these questions will demon-
strate the full coming of age of Lacanian psychoanalysis in social and
political analysis.

Conclusion

This chapter has elaborated the basic components of one particular

poststructuralist perspective on structure, agency, and affect. Drawing
selectively on thinkers like Derrida, Foucault, Heidegger, Lacan, Žižek,
Laclau and Mouffe, I have continued the deconstructive work on the
dominant positions of the structure-agency debate, which forms the
basis of Chapter 4, whilst setting out a dynamic alternative for thinking
about the interaction between these two poles. Resisting rationalist con-
ceits that this problem can be exhaustively resolved in purely conceptual
terms, I have sought to dwell on the fact that the dilemma of struc-
ture and agency is a rift in the very fabric of the human condition: this
rift can both unsettle structures and practices, whilst making possible
novel interventions and practices. It is better then to articulate a loose
grammar of concepts and logics that can enable us to better describe
and critically explain social phenomena in particular historical contexts.
In developing this grammar of concepts, I have also sought to unpick
the binary oppositions between objectivity and subjectivity, material-
ity and ideality, the virtual and the actual, and then weave together
alternative conceptual infrastructures that can better articulate these ele-
ments. Finally, the role of affects, emotions, unconscious enjoyments,
bodily pleasures, and so forth can be usefully folded into this picture
of structuration for they are intimately connected to my conception of
the subject. Affects and passions come to the fore in those moments
of agency, when subjects identify with new discourses and objects, but
they are also significant in accounting for the persistence of sedimented
structures, as they foreground the enjoyment subjects procure from their
identifications.
I believe that this reasoning makes a useful contribution to the
structure-agency debate. First, it rejects the simple intentionalist and
structuralist responses to the structure-agency dichotomy. Instead, it
radicalizes dialectical accounts by putting into question the residual
dualism of Giddens’s structuration theory and Bhaskar’s critical realism.
Rather than prioritizing totalized and determining social structures or
fully constituted subjects, I argue that social agents always find them-
selves immersed in a system of meaningful practices, which both shape
their identities and structure their practices. Crucially, however, these
 Structure, Agency, and Affect 183

structures are ontologically incomplete entities that can never fully

determine the identity of agents nor their ability to act. Indeed, it is
in the ‘space’ or ‘gap’ of social structures, as they are rendered visi-
ble in moments of crisis and dislocation, that the notion of a political
or radical subject can emerge through what might be called particu-
lar ‘acts of identification’. Because these identifications are understood
as decisions between different objects – newly available beliefs, ideolo-
gies, or discourses – some of which are excluded or repressed, whilst
those that are identified with can never be fully actualized, any form of
identification is doomed to fall short of its full promise.
Social structures and different forms of life are thus marked by gaps
and fissures. In part, this is because they are forged by political decisions
and lines of exclusion that repress certain possibilities. Such a commit-
ment to the ‘primacy of politics’ also brings with it the idea that social
structures and forms of life are constituted by exercises of power and
are marked by the repressions that form them. What is more, the mak-
ing visible of these gaps in the structures through crises and dislocatory
experiences makes it possible for subjects to identify anew and thus to
act differently. Expressed in a slightly different idiom, this moment of
identification is neatly captured by Hannah Arendt’s rethinking of free-
dom, which runs counter to the current liberal hegemony. In The Life
of the Mind, she questions the tendency in philosophical and scientific
thought to subsume acts of freedom under causal laws or mechanisms.
Instead, free decisions and actions are likened to miracles, which are
characterized as the ability ‘to begin something new’, that is, to set
in motion events and practices that cannot be controlled and whose
consequences cannot be foretold. Indeed, echoing her once mentor
Heidegger, freedom involves the ‘abyss of nothingness that opens up
before any deed that cannot be accounted for by a reliable chain of cause
and effect and is inexplicable in Aristotelian categories of potentiality
and actuality’ (Arendt, 1978, p. 205). In short, following Heidegger, sub-
jects are ‘thrown’ into worlds not of their choosing, though they have
the capacity under certain conditions to act and think differently (see
Glynos and Howarth, 2008b).
In this way, the poststructuralist approach I have put forward makes
room for the impact of human agency on social structures. How-
ever, there are still two rather well-worn critiques that could be
directed against my account. To begin with, there are those who
argue that poststructuralists like Laclau concede a too powerful – even
decisionistic – role to human subjectivity and agency in constitut-
ing social structures. For example, following Derrida, Laclau sometimes
alludes to Kierkegaard’s claim that the moment of decision is akin to a
184 Poststructuralism and After

‘moment of madness’, where the taking of a decision is analogous to

‘impersonating God’, in which God is that being ‘who has not to give
[an] account of his actions before any tribunal of reason, because He is
the source of rationality’ (Laclau, 1996, p. 56). But it is equally important
to remember that for Laclau ‘all decision is taken within a certain struc-
tural context’ (Laclau, 2004, p. 322). And since the structure is never
completely dislocated, human beings are ‘mortal gods’ – ‘those who have
to fill the gaps resulting from the absence of God on Earth’ – who can
only simulate God; the ‘madness’ of our decisions always fall short of
the omniscience of the latter (Laclau, 1996, p. 56). Instead of total inde-
terminacy, social actors (whether individual or collective) are always
partially situated in a particular social context, in which their ‘decisions’
involve the foreclosure of some political options. This means ‘the mad-
ness of the decision is . . . as all madness, a regulated one’ (Laclau, 1996,
p. 57).
At the same time, it will be recalled that Laclau distinguishes between
subject positions and political subjectivity (Laclau, 1990, pp. 60–1; Laclau
and Zac, 1994). As against a homogenous subject with an essential
identity and given set of interests, the former category refers to the
‘positioning’ of subjects within a discursive structure. What is more,
because there are many positions with which subjects can identify, an
individual can have a number of different subject positions (Laclau and
Mouffe, 1985, p. 115). This means that a particular social actor might
define himself as ‘white’, ‘middle class’, ‘Jewish’ or a ‘man’ – or a par-
ticular concatenation thereof – if such positions are available and if
they are sustained by a series of accompanying practices. By contrast,
as I have argued, if the concept of subject position accounts for the
multiple forms by which individuals are ‘produced’ as social actors, the
idea of a radical political subjectivity captures the way in which social
actors act. Transcending Althusser’s privileging of the structure over the
agent, without recourse, for example, to Giddens’s dualistic conception
of structuration theory, Laclau argues that the actions of subjects emerge
because of the contingency of the discourses that confer identity to
them (Giddens, 1984). This in turn presupposes the categories of dis-
location and identification, which pick out the processes by which the
contingency of discursive structures come to be seen, and new forms of
subjective decision are performed (Laclau, 1990, pp. 39–41).2
Nonetheless, there are still those who claim that poststructuralists
(like Laclau) posit an unconditional subjectivity that is literally able
to ‘create’ meaningful structures in a completely voluntarist fashion,
though my previous discussion goes some way, I think, in combating
this critique. Yet there is still something to this claim, as Laclau’s
 Structure, Agency, and Affect 185

conception tends to focus on extreme or ‘limit’ situations such as

revolutionary upheavals, when a thorough restructuring of social rela-
tions may occur. But even here Laclau’s thesis is qualified by his thought
that most revolutionary movements and agents are conditioned by
existing ideological traditions and organizational infrastructures. In fact,
this qualification is acknowledged in some of Laclau’s later writings
when he argues that certain discourses need to be available and credi-
ble if movements and political agents are to emerge and construct new
social orders (Howarth, 2004; Laclau, 1990, pp. 65–7).
Yet there is a second aspect to this difficulty, which concerns the ques-
tion of taking a decision itself. In this regard, Laclau tends to regard
decision-making, the emergence of political agents, and the creation of
new social orders as equivalent. However, this collapses the distinction
between different kinds of decision-making. In this respect, a distinction
needs to be made between decisions taken within a structure and deci-
sions taken about a structure. These two modalities of decision-making
are best viewed as the outer poles of a spectrum of possible forms of
decision-making, in which concrete acts can be located according to the
degrees to which they produce structural effects. For example, it is evi-
dent that consumers in free markets or politicians in parliaments are
continuously taking decisions without ever questioning or creating new
structural contexts in which these choices are made. However, in revolu-
tionary situations and organic crises collective political subjects clearly
take decisions about the creation and formation of new social structures
(Howarth, 2000a, p. 122). As I have suggested in this chapter, these are
the situations in which Laclau’s postructuralist account of structure and
agency assumes its importance.
What this means is that rather than a general theory of a radical politi-
cal agency we need to remain sensitive to the specific historical contexts
in which different kinds of subjectivity come into play, and various
identities are constructed. The criterion for this analysis depends on the
kinds of decision that get taken, and the circumstances in which they
are taken. There is thus no avoiding the concrete analysis of a particular
historical conjuncture to explore the specific reasons and conditions in
which the radical contingency of social structures and relations is made
visible. The disclosure of these contingencies offers new possibilities for
action and identification.3 Equally, it is important to see how these new
acts of constitution become sedimented and routinized, so that their
ultimate contingency is covered over. Here the focus is on the various
hegemonic practices that transform incipient forms of mythical iden-
tification into novel collective social imaginaries. Conversely, analysis
also has to focus on why and how the transformation of institutions
186 Poststructuralism and After

and social structures has been prevented.4 But this, in turn, requires a
set of categories that can enable us to characterize and critically explain
systems of social relations in particular conjunctures. It also requires a
consideration of the role of power, domination, hegemony, and ideol-
ogy in exploring the structuring, contestation, and transformation of
social systems. It is to these issues that we now turn.
6
Rethinking Power and Domination

Beginning with the idea that all socio-symbolic orders are marked by
a radical contingency that becomes visible in moments of crisis or dis-
location, the previous chapter developed a dynamic model of structure
and agency to explore the change and sustenance of social practices and
systems. Such a model is predicated on the idea that the paradox of
structure and agency constitutes an insurmountable fissure at the heart
of social reality that cannot be bypassed or transcended in any ratio-
nal fashion. Nonetheless, by unpicking and reworking the notions of
structure, agency, and affect in the existing traditions of theory from a
poststructuralist point of view, I put forward a loose grammar of con-
cepts and logics that can enable us to describe, explain, and critically
evaluate problematized social phenomena.
Yet, as I concluded, this loose theoretical grammar still needs fur-
ther refinement, if it is to help in the task of critical explanation.
At least three questions remain to be addressed. In the first place, the
development of a distinctive poststructuralist account of structure and
agency requires an explicit account of power and domination. If struc-
tures are always limited and exclusionary, and if they constrain some
agents whilst enabling others, then some account of their institution
and character is necessary. The concepts of power and domination are
vital in addressing these issues. The poststructuralist tradition does, of
course, supply important resources to explore this issue. Foucault’s vari-
ous pictures of power, which are connected to the different stages in the
evolution of his thought, and those that have developed his work in dif-
ferent directions, are an essential starting point in carrying out this task.
But, secondly, though Foucault furnishes vital ammunition in explor-
ing the connections between power, discourse, and domination, I shall
argue that his work must be supplemented by a neo-Gramscian logic of

187
188 Poststructuralism and After

hegemony. Building on Laclau and Mouffe’s poststructuralist reading of

the Marxist tradition, I show how the concept of hegemony can help
us to explore the formation and dissolution of wider social formations,
whilst foregrounding the role of ideology in shaping and reproducing
relations of power and domination (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). Hege-
mony is thus understood as a particular type of social practice, which
captures the way in which contingent elements are connected together,
as well as a form of rule or regime in which subjects are subjected and
governed in different ways.
A third and final problem arises from the abstract character of the
model proposed so far. As critics often suggest, poststructuralist con-
ceptions of structure and agency can harbour a ‘sociological deficit’,
which render them unable to grasp the historical specificity of particular
practices and regimes, especially with respect to their ‘underlying’ socio-
economic structures, the role of government, and the character of the
state in modern societies (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999; Mouzelis,
1988; 1990; Townshend, 2003). At the same time, as Raymond Williams
observed, proponents of grand social and political theories often indulge
in ‘epochal analysis’, which focusses on a ‘selected and abstracted dom-
inant system’, thus neglecting the more important task of ‘authentic
historical analysis’, in which it is ‘necessary at every point to recog-
nize the complex interrelations between movements and tendencies
both within and beyond a specific and effective dominance’ (Williams,
1977, p. 121, cited in Clarke et al., 2007, p. 152). In keeping with the
desire to capture these ‘complex interrelations’, the third part of the
chapter thus endeavours to articulate concepts and logics from French
regulation theory, as well as Foucauldian accounts of governmentality.
The aim is to develop a thicker set of concepts and logics with which
poststructuralist social theorists can characterize and explain particular
historical formations.

Foucault, power, and domination

A central poststructuralist assumption, which provides the basis for

the approach elaborated in Chapter 5, is the fragility and historic-
ity of social formations, practices, and identities. The stress on radical
contingency, which then makes possible a complex dialectic between
identity and identification, is important because it opens up a space
of choice and freedom for the subject. But it also discloses a differ-
ent way of elucidating the exercise of power, the character of social
and ideological domination, and the operation of hegemonic practices
in the structuring of social relations (see Howarth, 2010a). Indeed, as
 Rethinking Power and Domination 189

Foucault suggests, it is the contingency of things that makes possible

the interconnection between power, critique, domination, and evalua-
tion. In this section, I want to say a little bit more about the relationship
between structure-agency, discourse, and power.
I have already implied that the concepts of discourse and power
are intimately related in different ways. But various approaches have
sought to connect these two elements. These include supporters of
Critical Discourse Analysis and the Discourse-Historical Approach, as
well as proponents of Argumentative and Discursive Policy Analysis
(Fairclough, 1995; Fairclough and Wodak, 1997; Hajer, 1995; 2009;
Wodak and Meyer, 2001; 2009). Yet perhaps the most developed has
been put forward by Foucault (Foucault, 1972; 1978; 1980; 1981).
I do not want to add new layers to the voluminous literature on
his various conceptions of discourse and power, but rather to pin-
point three pictures of power, each of which mirrors his different
methodological orientations. Following Dreyfus and Rabinow’s clas-
sification, these may be termed his ‘archaeological’, ‘genealogical’,
and ‘problematizing’ modes of analysis (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1983;
Howarth, 2002).
Foucault’s earlier archaeological analysis of knowledge focusses on the
production of statements or serious speech acts (Foucault, 1972; 1978).
Such linguistic elements are utterances which qualify as candidates for
truth and falsity because they conform to a historically specific system
of rules. They are held to be true or false because they are accepted as
such by the relevant community of experts. Foucault thus examines
those discursive practices in which subjects are empowered to make
serious truth claims about objects that are constituted within partic-
ular discursive formations. They can do so because of their training,
institutional location, and mode of discourse. For example, assertions
and predictions about the prospects of global warming only become
statements when they are uttered by suitably qualified scientists and
climate experts who present plausible theories and evidence to justify
their arguments. Foucault is thus able to account for the rarity of sci-
entific discourse, the way science is demarcated from non-science, the
relationship between science and ideology, the powerful constraints and
conditions that regulate and limit the articulation of statements, and so
forth (Foucault, 1981).
Power is important in this model both in terms of locating those
moments of exclusion, in which certain statements are condemned to
what he calls ‘a wild exteriority’, and in highlighting a positive set of
rules, procedures, and mechanisms that make possible the production
of discourse (Foucault, 1981). But, as Foucault himself later admitted,
190 Poststructuralism and After

the question of power remained implicit and undertheorized in his early

work. For example, he notes that an important defining moment in his
understanding of power occurred when he realized its ‘positive’ effects:

What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the
fact that it doesn’t only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it
traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge,
produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network
which runs through the whole social body, much more than as a
negative instance whose function is repression.
(Foucault, 1980, p. 119)

At the same time, his quasi-structuralist theory of discourse ran aground

on a series of methodological contradictions, not least because his
purely descriptive intent pushed against the critical potential of the
enterprise, whilst the role of the archaeologist as both a producer
and critic of discourse was not clarified (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1983,
pp. 79–100).
By contrast, his Nietzschean-inspired genealogical approach broadens
the notion of discourse to include non-discursive practices, whilst stress-
ing the constitutive function of power in the formation and operation of
scientific knowledge. In a justly famous passage in Discipline and Punish,
he thus argues that power and knowledge are mutually constitutive:

Perhaps, too, we should abandon the whole tradition that allows

us to imagine that knowledge can exist only where the power rela-
tions are suspended and that knowledge can develop only outside its
injunctions, demands, and interests. Perhaps we should abandon the
belief that power makes mad and that, by the same token, the renun-
ciation of power is one of the conditions of knowledge. We should
admit rather that power produces knowledge (and not simply by
encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is
useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another; that
there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a
field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and
at the same time constitute power relations.
(Foucault, 1977, p. 27)

In this picture, Foucault stresses the interweaving of various systems

of ‘power-knowledge’, such as criminology or psychiatry, and exam-
ines their role in producing and disciplining social subjects like ‘the
 Rethinking Power and Domination 191

criminal’, ‘the delinquent’, or ‘the insane’. His genealogical investiga-

tions display the contingent and ignoble origins of such systems, whilst
stressing the role of power and conflict in forging identities, rules, and
social forms (Foucault, 1984).
But though Foucault broadens the scope of his investigations to study
the role of social and political institutions, whilst making his concept of
power more explicit, there are still remainders. Not only does he tend
to conflate his account of power-knowledge with his critique of the sci-
entificity of the human sciences, but he tends to reduce subjectivity to
the disciplining and ordering of ‘docile bodies’, leaving little or no space
for human freedom and agency (Foucault, 1977; Visker, 1995). He also
eschews the role of meaning and the symbolic order in the name of a
war-like struggle between forces (Foucault, 1980). However, in his final
writings on sexuality, governmentality, and subjectivity, Foucault seems
to acknowledge these weaknesses (if only implicitly) by offering a third
model of discourse and power (Foucault, 1979; 1985; 1988a). More pre-
cisely, he modifies his critique of the juridical model of sovereign power
by developing a more strategic perspective. The idea emerges in the first
volume of the History of Sexuality, were he argues that

Power is everywhere: not because it embraces everything, but because

it comes from everywhere . . . Power is not an institution, nor a struc-
ture, nor a possession. It is the name we give to a complex strategic
situation in a particular society.
(Foucault, 1979, p. 93. My emphasis)

This new strategic perspective enables Foucault to rethink the relation-

ship between domination, power, and discourse, whilst developing his
novel account of governmentality.
In a late interview published in The Final Foucault, he thus articulates
his most suggestive account of the relationship between domination,
power, discourse, and freedom (Foucault, 1991b, p. 12). He begins by
referring to ‘states of domination’, in which ‘relations of power are fixed
in such a way that they are perpetually asymmetrical and the margin
of liberty is extremely limited’.1 Here the category of domination refers
to relatively fixed systems of control, which strongly reduce the free-
dom of the subject, thus confining it to sedimented positions within a
social structure. The delineation of effective states of domination – eco-
nomic, social, institutional, or sexual – poses particular problems for
the question of resistance. Where will resistance be organized? Who
will conduct such resistance? What will be the form and strategies of
192 Poststructuralism and After

resistance? Issues pertaining to our understanding of resistance are thus

directly connected to precise forms of domination.
What, then, about the concept of power in this picture? According to
Foucault, the exercise of power presupposes a weakening of control – a
crisis or dislocation of the structure so to speak – and the emergence of
possibilities that are not evident in the existing structure of domination.
‘If one or the other were completely at the disposition of the other and
became his thing,’ argues Foucault, ‘an object on which he can exer-
cise an infinite and unlimited violence, there would not be relations of
power’ (Foucault, 1991b, p. 12). Instead, in his words, ‘there cannot be
relations of power unless the subjects are free’. And this means that

to exercise a relation of power, there must be on both sides at least

a certain form of liberty. Even though the relation of power may be
completely unbalanced or when one can truly say that he has ‘all
power’ over the other, a power can only be exercised over another
to the extent that the latter still has the possibility of committing
suicide, of jumping out of the window or of killing the other. That
means that in the relations of power, there is necessarily the pos-
sibility of resistance, for if there were no possibility of resistance –
of violent resistance, of escape, of ruse, of strategies that reverse the
situation – there would be no relations of power.
(Foucault, 1991b, p. 12)

Foucault’s understanding of power thus posits a certain degree of freedom

for social agents both to maintain systems of domination and to propose
counter strategies of resistance. He thus refuses to answer questions like,
‘If power is everywhere, then how can there be freedom or liberty?’,
but argues instead that ‘if there are relations of power throughout every
social field it is because there is freedom everywhere’ (Foucault, 1991b,
p. 12). At this level of analysis, therefore, any struggle designed to mod-
ify existing social relations and to institute a new system of domination
encounters resistance that has to be overcome. This assumes that any
drive to create a new system of power will itself be an unstable configura-
tion, always vulnerable to change and transformation.2 In the language
of the poststructuralist approach advanced here, any social structure
involves an exercise of power and is always dislocated. It thus presup-
poses something that exceeds it; the rendering visible of this disloca-
tory condition makes possible new forms of identification and acts of
institution.
Foucault’s various pictures of power undoubtedly lay the basis for a
poststructuralist account of structure, agency, power, and domination.
 Rethinking Power and Domination 193

Yet they are not without difficulty. Of particular concern is how he

links his detailed studies of subjectivity and agency – his so-called
micro-physics of power – to his broader account of social structure
and domination, which he sometimes captures by delineating an all-
encompassing logic of bio-power (e.g., Foucault, 1977). We seem to
be confronted either with a totalizing story of disciplinary power, in
which power produces and controls ‘docile bodies’, or detailed historical
accounts of the meticulous rituals of power and technologies of the self.
At other times, we are also asked to choose between a focus on ideology
and symbolic meanings, on the one hand, or an immanent materialism
that focusses on the war-like clash of forces on the other. For example,
in some later reflections on the concept of power, he argues:

Here I believe one’s point of reference should not be to the great

model of language (langue) and signs, but to that of war and battle.
The history which bears and determines us has the form of a war
rather than that of a language: relations of power, not relations of
meaning.
(Foucault, 1980, p. 114)

Power is thus detached from language, meaning, and discourse, and

needs to be supplemented with additional categories and logics.

Hegemonic practices: Gramsci and poststructuralism

It is with respect to these issues that the post-Marxist concepts of politics

and hegemony are vital. As I suggested in Chapter 5, following Laclau,
the construction of any discursive structure involves the taking of deci-
sions in an undecidable terrain. But for a decision to be taken in these
circumstances, other possible alternatives must be repressed. This means
that the institution of a social identity is always an act of power. Hence,
as Laclau puts it, ‘the “objectivity” arising from a decision is formed,
in its most fundamental sense, as a power relationship’ (Laclau, 1990,
p. 30). This implication follows from the ontological presuppositions of
poststructuralist discourse theory, namely, the fact that any social rela-
tion or formation is not fixed or closed in any ultimate way. Instead, the
partial fixation of meanings involves the articulation of ‘floating signi-
fiers’ or elements into nodal points that temporarily stem the flow of
meanings and differences (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, p. 112).
Now, the construction and institution of various social formations
in my version of poststructuralist theory is understood in terms of
hegemonic practices. What is hegemony and how does it relate to
194 Poststructuralism and After

power? The concept of hegemony has complex usages and connotations

in political theory and international relations, as various traditions of
thinking have sought to fix and decontest its meaning (Beasley-Murray,
2010; Cox, 1987; Joseph, 2002; Keohane, 1984). Here, I shall concentrate
my attention initially on Antonio Gramsci’s seminal attempts to decon-
struct and transcend the essentialism of classical Marxism, especially as
it was embodied in the Second International by thinkers like Georgi
Plekhanov, Karl Kautsky, and Eduard Bernstein. Yet even this delimi-
tation is not uncontroversial, as Gramsci’s work has spawned diverse
interpretations and readings. Having briefly contextualized these differ-
ent readings of his work, I shall say a little more about his distinctive
concept of hegemony.
Structural Marxists like Louis Althusser and Nicos Poulantzas have
been inclined to equate Gramsci’s historicism with Gyorgy Lukacs’s
teleological approach. In these accounts, Gramsci’s writings remained
trapped in a historicist and humanist framework, which only a more
radical ‘epistemological rupture’ could overcome (Althusser, 1969,
pp. 105n, 114; Poulantzas, 1973). Yet these readings misconstrue
Gramsci’s position, mainly because it is precisely against this kind of
historicism that his ‘philosophy of praxis’ is elaborated. Gramsci’s his-
toricism problematizes the idea of historical teleology, just as much as
it challenges mechanical forms of economic determinism in the Marxist
tradition. Instead, he insisted that the creation of ‘historical blocs’ and
‘collective wills’ out of dispersed and contingent elements, through a
range of hegemonic practices and operations, was the only way in which
social formations could be forged and transformed. Gramsci thus moved
some way to abandoning the transcendental or ontological grounding
of Marxist theory, which privileged the contradictions of material life in
a narrowly economistic fashion. Just how far he managed to overcome
some of these difficulties is still a matter of debate.
More substantively, there is also dispute about the philosophical and
ideological content of Gramsci’s orientation. This is reflected in the
ongoing debates about the impact of his work and the different interpre-
tations it has provoked. Some readings emphasize the Leninist character
of Gramsci’s political theory, in which the core of his political philos-
ophy is Marxist and revolutionary, whilst others stress his affinity with
Eurocommunist and social democratic renditions (Bobbio, 1988; Femia,
1981, p. 283; Salvadori, 1979). In short, at the heart of this dispute
is Gramsci’s commitment to democratic forms of political strategy, his
views about human and social emancipation, and his vision of the good
society.
 Rethinking Power and Domination 195

At the same time, more orthodox Marxist accounts of Gramsci, which

stress the role of material interests, structures of production, and the cap-
italist state, jostle with poststructuralist, postcolonial, and postmodern
interpretations, which emphasize the role of culture, human subjectiv-
ity, and political identities. More recently, some social theorists have
argued for ‘posthegemonic’ or even ‘anti-hegemonic’ approaches to
political analysis and practice, and these perspectives are directed at
Gramsci’s affirmation of a hegemonic logic of political struggle and
power, which is based on the centrality of representation (Beasley-
Murray, 2010; Day, 2005). Such views argue that poststructuralist and
postmodernist interpretations of Gramsci – and Gramsci’s writings
themselves – are either complicit with the modernist assumptions of
liberal and Marxist theory or fail to take seriously the role of the state
and class power. Critics like Jon Beasley-Murray relate the notion of
posthegemony to the theses put forward by Michael Hardt and Antonio
Negri’s Empire, thus stressing the role of affect, habit, and the multi-
tude, whereas Richard Day articulates his anti-Gramscian stance in an
anarchist idiom.
As is often the case, there is some merit in each of these positions.
Indeed, it is both testimony to Gramsci’s influence and the open-ended
quality of his writings, especially his later work, which was composed in
abysmal conditions, that there are about as many ‘Gramscis’ as there
are different interpretations. In my view, Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks
prepared the ground for a socialist theory of democracy, which is evi-
dent in Gramsci’s conception of intellectuals and intellectual activity,
as well as his ideas of hegemony and civil society. His account of the
role of organic intellectuals, coupled with his reworking of the revolu-
tionary party, also intimates a non-bureaucratic relationship between
the rulers and the ruled, whilst setting out a participatory model of
political activity. Finally, his political philosophy sought to incorpo-
rate non-class relations and identities, such as those built around the
nation or popular-democratic struggles, into a more capacious Marxist
problematic.
Yet these arguments and positions are developed within the frame-
work of a Marxist philosophy in which the class structure is still
conferred a decisive role in shaping the overall form and direction of
historical change. Indeed, despite the deconstructive readings of Marx,
Lenin, and Trotsky, it is possible to discern at least two essentialist and
reductionist assumptions underpinning his reworking of the Marxist tra-
dition. These are his ontological commitments to a fundamental social
class – the proletariat in capitalist societies – to which is conferred the
196 Poststructuralism and After

task of bringing about significant social change and the centrality of a

‘decisive economic nucleus’ as both the main object of political struggle
and the ultimate determinant of the character of the political and ide-
ological superstructures. Both of these assumptions require the Marxist
notions of a closed conception of society with a set of predetermined
laws of operation and development. For these reasons, Gramsci’s inno-
vative conception of hegemony, as well as his introduction of ideas such
as ‘collective wills’ and ‘historical blocs’, in which contingent elements
are linked together in a non-reductive and non-determining way, are
compromised by an essentialist and linear theory of history (Laclau and
Mouffe, 1985, pp. 65–71). In short, Gramsci remained wedded to the
idea of human and social emancipation, in which the diremptions and
dominations of class rule could be overcome in a socialist utopia, and
these ideals were grounded on a materialist conception of history that
presupposed an ultimate purpose in the unfolding of social and political
change.
Nonetheless, I still want to insist that Gramsci embarked on a fun-
damental reworking of the Marxist concept of society, which was
grounded on Marx’s famous base/superstructure model of social rela-
tions. As I noted in Chapter 4, an important implication of Marx’s
‘guiding thread’ arises from the importance he places on the ‘economic
structure of society’ in influencing the ideas and beliefs of social agents,
as well as the legal and political systems that govern their conduct.
Gramsci, of course, sought to rework the Marxist concept of totality
by engineering a twofold inversion of the Marxist model of society
(Bobbio, 1988). Whereas Marx privileges the role of economic produc-
tion, focussing his attention on the contradictory relationship between
the forces and relations of production, Gramsci emphasizes the ide-
ological superstructures (‘state plus civil society’) over the economic
structure. In addition, within the realm of the ‘complex superstructures’,
Gramsci asserts the priority of civil society, which he identifies with the
moment of consent and consensus, over political society, which he iden-
tifies with the moment of force or coercion (Gramsci, 1971, p. 182).
His stress on the production of consensus and the manufacture of con-
sent by key actors opens up new ways of explaining the institution and
reproduction of class rule and foregrounds the importance of conscious-
ness and subjectivity in accounting for social and historical change.
It also makes possible a sociological analysis of different combinations
of force and consent in the articulation of particular social formations
in different historical contexts.
Yet Gramsci’s reengineering of the Marxist topography of social rela-
tions was not a simple inversion of the basic Marxist distinctions,
 Rethinking Power and Domination 197

for he also endeavours to deconstruct and reconnect the dualisms he

introduces (Gramsci, 1971, pp. 169–70; see also Ives, 2004; Texier,
1979; Thomas, 2011). For instance, although Gramsci problematizes
the relationship between state and civil society in Marxist theory, he
also introduces the idea of the ‘integral state’ to account for both the
hegemonic and dictatorial aspects of political rule. The integral state
thus leads to a general redefinition of the state in Marxist theory. Rather
than just an instrument of class rule, Gramsci identifies it with ‘the
entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the
ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance, but man-
ages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules’ (Gramsci,
1971, p. 244). Similarly, his concept of a ‘historical bloc’ articulates
both structural and superstructural elements of society – the ‘decisive
economic nucleus’, political society and civil society – as a ‘unity of
opposites and distincts’ (Gramsci, 1971, p. 137). Historical blocs are
thus configurations of related elements, although they are ultimately
organized around a fundamental social class and a dominant mode of
production.
In short, then, by challenging the economism of classical Marxism,
in which dominant productive structures are sustained by the coercive
power of the state and the propagation of various forms of false con-
sciousness (or ideology), Gramsci argues that the maintenance of class
rule should be explained via a reworked conception of hegemony. Hege-
mony is not identified with the political leadership of a certain class in
a strategic alliance struggling for state power, as Lenin had argued, but
involves the construction and dissemination of ‘intellectual and moral
leadership’ throughout society (Gramsci, 1971, p. 57). It comprises a
complex set of practices designed to win the active and passive con-
sent of key social actors in a particular historical bloc, whilst securing
the compliance of others. Hegemony is not to be identified with a nar-
row notion of domination and government, because his new ‘general
notion of State’ includes ‘elements which need to be referred back to
the notion of civil society (in the sense that one might say that State =
political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected by
the armour of coercion)’ (Gramsci, 1971, p. 263).
Although much ink has been spilled on Gramsci’s category of hege-
mony, which is the linchpin of his reworking of classical Marxism, the
vital notion of equilibrium has often been neglected (McNally, 2008).
In this context, it is not possible to develop a full analysis of this
concept. But suffice it to note that Gramsci develops the concept of equi-
librium through an engagement with neoclassical liberal economists like
Pareto and Pantaleoni, and by borrowing from Trotsky’s incorporation
198 Poststructuralism and After

of the idea into his global analysis of capitalism. Gramsci focusses on

the forging of various compromise formations at different levels of the
social – the micro or molecular level, where forces are composed from
various elements by the creative intervention of organic intellectuals
(who are themselves unstable ‘balances of forces’); the level of the state,
where forces compete with one another for state power via the forma-
tion of political parties and social movements; and, finally, at what he
calls the more universal level – the terrain of ‘moral, ethical, and intel-
lectual leadership’ – where forces strive to articulate ideologies that can
function as a virtual common sense. The forging of various equilibria
must be set against a general background of disequilibrium, so that they
are only ever partial formations, and thus marked by varying degrees of
stability. Any concrete equilibrium can thus be located on a continuum
that is bounded by the regulative ideals of stasis and flux. Equilibria can
also be characterized by their degree of organicity, that is, by their par-
ticular blends of force/coercion and consent, and by the relations they
establish between the forces that make up concrete historical blocs.
This re-conceptualization of the nature and dynamics of class rule
leads Gramsci to develop a new political strategy for subordinate classes
such as the proletariat. As against Lenin’s strategy of constructing tem-
porary alliances between distinct classes – workers, middle classes, and
peasants – in a bid to overthrow class rule, he argues that social classes
must transcend their narrow economic interests and elaborate a new ide-
ology. Gramsci stresses that these different classes and groups must come
to share a common set of political objectives, which is based on a new
set of beliefs and practices, by forging a new ‘collective will’ (Gramsci,
1971, pp. 125–33). In other words, politics ceases to be a zero-sum game
conducted by classes with fixed identities and interests, and becomes
more a process of constructing relationships and agreements amongst
divergent groups and classes. Moreover, it occurs largely in the realm of
civil society and consists of ‘winning over’ agents and groups to certain
ideological and political positions. Gramsci calls this strategy of win-
ning hegemony in civil society before the attainment of state power
a ‘war of position’, and he distinguishes this approach from a ‘war of
movement’ or ‘manoeuvre’ in which the aim of politics is a direct and
rapid confrontation between opposed forces.
Finally, as Gramsci argues, different forms of hegemony are put
together by organic intellectuals, whose political and ideological task
is to elaborate and inculcate the new ‘common sense’ that is to form the
basis of a particular historical bloc. This idea of ‘common sense’ corre-
sponds to Gramsci’s reworked conception of ideology, which for him is
 Rethinking Power and Domination 199

not a purely negative notion that connotes illusory forms of represen-

tation. Instead, ideology is understood as a positive material force that
is vital in advancing the interests and objectives of various hegemonic
projects. Importantly, Gramsci distinguishes between ideologies that are
‘historically organic’ and can thus form the connective tissue of a new
common sense, and those that are ‘arbitrary, rationalistic or “willed” ’
and are thus unlikely to form the basis of a successful hegemonic project
(Gramsci, 1971, pp. 376–7). In this way, organic ideologies provide the
means to create collective wills and hegemonic projects that have the
capacity to transform societies in various ways.

Hegemony as a practice of coalition building

It is clear, then, that the concept of hegemony in Gramsci’s texts is
a multifaceted notion. Within contemporary poststructuralist theory,
expressed in its most general form by Ernesto Laclau, the concept refers
to the way in which

One difference, without ceasing to be a particular difference, assumes

the representation of an incommensurable totality. In that way,
its body is split between the particularity which it still is and the
more universal signification of which it is the bearer. This opera-
tion of taking up, by a particularity, of an incommensurable universal
signification is what I have called hegemony.
(Laclau, 2005, p. 70)

But, in developing this concept, I want to unfold and emphasize two

related aspects. In the first place, hegemony can be seen as a politi-
cal practice that involves the linking together of disparate demands to
forge projects or assemblages that can contest a particular form of rule,
practice, or policy. These practices presuppose the existence of antago-
nisms and the presence of contingent elements that can be articulated
by rival political forces. Hegemony in this sense represents a metonymi-
cal operation in which contiguous elements are connected together by
a displacement mechanism, in which demands in one site of the social
are extended and taken up in another. If this happens, grievances and
demands become overdetermined, so that their meanings and import
are modified.
Hegemony is thus a type of political relation that creates equivalences
between disparate elements via the construction of political frontiers
that divide social relations; the identities that compose such equivalen-
tial chains are then modified by this practice. What I shall thus call the
200 Poststructuralism and After

first face of hegemony shares a family resemblance with Robert Dahl’s

intuitive concept of power – ‘A has power over B to the extent that
he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do’ (Dahl,
1957, pp. 202–3) – though we need to strip Dahl’s concept of its dubi-
ous ontological and epistemological presuppositions. In other words,
power can be understood as the ability of an actor or agent to affect
another, even though pluralists and behaviouralists like Dahl tended
to restrict their focus to the measurement of an actor’s ability to win
decisions on key issues in observable decision-making situations, and
they restricted their conception of interests to those preferences that
were explicitly articulated within the policy process. This account nec-
essarily implies disagreement, or in Lukes’s words, ‘an observable conflict
of (subjective) interests, seen as express policy preferences, revealed by
political participation’ (Lukes, 2005, p. 19).3 Yet this focus on the impo-
sition of one project’s values and interests over another should not come
at the expense of deeper processes and more complicated logics. For
one thing, though overt conflicts are often resolved by majority deci-
sions in parliaments, cabinets, and various administrative sites and can
often be the result of powerful figures like prime ministers or presidents
imposing their will upon others, the hegemony perspective insists on
the need to explore the various discursive and hegemonic operations
that make such decisions possible. An exploration of these conditions
helps us to clarify our grammar of ‘power over’ in the fields of politics
and policy.
Critical in this regard is the making and breaking of projects or dis-
course coalitions. Here the immediate focus is to explore the intersecting
logics of equivalence and difference to characterize and explain the cou-
pling or decoupling of heterogeneous social demands. But this involves
important rhetorical elements as well. Even William Riker, one of the
founders of contemporary rational choice, has supplemented formal
rational choice theory with an emphasis on the role of rhetoric in the
forging and disruption of political coalitions (Riker, 1986; 1996). In a
telling phrase, Riker coined the term ‘heresthetic’ to capture the ‘art of
political manipulation’ by which politicians use a variety of strategic
devices to bring about favourable outcomes (Riker, 1986). Such devices
include practices of determining who are to be the relevant sets of agents
in a particular situation; inventing new actions and political practices
that circumvent existing ones; framing and reframing the evaluation
of outcomes by others so that actors can improve their prospects of
achieving goals; altering the perceptions and character of individual
preferences by various rhetorical operations and interventions; and so
on (Riker, 1996; see Shepsle, 2003, pp. 309–10).
 Rethinking Power and Domination 201

But of equal importance in this regard is the construction of new dis-

courses that can win over subjects to a particular project or coalition,
whilst disorganizing and marginalizing opposing coalitions. One way of
doing this involves the practice of ‘rhetorical redescription’ (Rorty, 1989;
Skinner, 2002). Here it is possible to profit from Quentin Skinner’s
reactivation of Quintilian’s technique of rhetorical redescription –
paradiastole – to analyse struggles for hegemony. Skinner elaborates
upon Quintilian’s advice to those charged, for example, with present-
ing factual narratives to persuade a court of law. The technique involves
restating facts ‘but not all in the same way’, as the rhetorician ‘must
assign different causes, a different state of mind and a different motive
for what was done’ (Quintilian cited in Skinner, 2002, p. 183). Of par-
ticular interest for discourse theorists is the substitution of a rival – yet
neighbouring – evaluative term ‘that serves to picture an action no less
plausibly, but serves at the same time to place it in a contrasting light’
(Skinner, 2002, p. 183). Thus, in Quintillian’s words, ‘prodigality must
be more leniently redescribed as liberality, avarice as carefulness, negli-
gence as simplicity of mind’ (Quintilian cited in Skinner, 2002, p. 183).
The logic of rhetorical redescription is thus useful to examine the way
in which hegemonic battles involve constant endeavours to reframe
issues and processes in ways that are conducive to a particular project
(Howarth, 2005, p. 343).
The logic of rhetorical redescription goes hand in hand with the
practice of structuring the terrain of argumentation so that certain
demands and interests are organized in and out of the policymaking
process. To adapt Schattschneider’s marvellous phrase, all forms of argu-
mentation exude a partiality in favour of exploiting certain kinds of
conflict and suppressing others. This is because argumentation and
rhetoric is ‘the mobilization of bias’: some issues and arguments are
organized into politics whilst others are organized out (Schattschneider,
1960, p. 71). For example, if opponents of aviation expansion at London
Heathrow during the 2000s were to accept that the struggles about air-
port expansion were about the achievement of ‘sustainable aviation’,
they would immediately rule out more radical demands and claims (see
Griggs and Howarth, 2013). The logic of rhetorical redescription and the
structuring of various terrains of argumentation finds echoes in what
Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz famously called the ‘power of non-
decisionmaking’, that is, the decision not to decide by immunizing core
issues from debate and contestation through agenda setting, and so on
(Bachrach and Baratz, 1962; 1963; 1970). I shall take up this so-called
second face of power – as well as the third – when I discuss the character
of hegemony as form.
202 Poststructuralism and After

Finally, the formation and dissolution of discourse coalitions also pre-

supposes the construction of identities and the emergence of political
subjects. Subjects and identities in this perspective do not pre-exist their
struggles and conflicts. Instead, in many cases, they are actually pro-
duced in the very construction of projects and coalitions: they emerge
in the complicated practices through which groups and agents seek
to represent and articulate their demands, identities, and constituen-
cies. As Derrida demonstrates in his various deconstructions of speech
and writing, which I discussed in Chapter 1, the practice of represen-
tation is never simply about the ‘re-presentation’ of something that is
already there – something that is given or present in a set of preferences
and interests for example – but involves a complex relaying movement
between leaders and constituencies in an effort to forge a representation
that is never transparent or complete (Derrida, 1976, pp. 35–6, 295–302).
This relaying movement operates between many different levels and
sites of society and the policy process, and thus involves a constant
modification and augmentation of interests as issues are negotiated in
different forums and spaces. Power thus operates at the bedrock of social
and political processes and does not just supervene on such processes.
In short, then, if the first face of hegemony foregrounds the
metonymical dimension of political practices – the way in which a
particular group or movement begins to take on tasks and activities
in adjacent or contiguous spheres of social relations, thus seeking to
connect such demands with their own – it does not preclude the
metaphorical aspect. On the contrary, the role of metaphor (and partic-
ular metaphors) is essential because, if a group is to successfully hegemo-
nize the demands and identities of others, then it must create analogical
relations – forms of resemblance – between such demands, whilst artic-
ulating representational forms that can partially fix or condense such
demands into a more universal (if ultimately precarious) unity. As I shall
argue below, this process often involves the production of empty sig-
nifiers that can hold together different demands and identities by
successfully drawing frontiers against and excluding others. Here again
one particular difference will often begin to assume a more universal
function. But this brings us nicely to the second face of hegemony.

Hegemony as a form of rule or governance

The first face of hegemony discloses the way in which projects and coali-
tions are forged out of disparate demands and identities. Yet any success-
ful assemblage or hegemonic project has to be installed and reproduced.
Drawing on Gramsci and Laclau, it follows that the institution of any
 Rethinking Power and Domination 203

order involves the exercise of power and coercion, as certain forces are
repressed and excluded. But the process of constituting and maintaining
a given socio-symbolic order also involves some degree of acceptance by
those who are subject to it. In other words, it needs to win the active or
passive consent of subjects, or at least it needs to secure the complicity
of a range of social actors to its practices and dispositions. This means
that it must offer points of attachment and identification that can grip
subjects in particular ways, thus providing benefits and enjoyments that
affectively bond them to a certain set of actors, whilst causing them
to shun and demonize others. Hegemony as a form of rule speaks in
general to the way in which subjects accept and conform to a particu-
lar regime, practice, or policy, even though they may have previously
resisted or opposed them.4 Yet the achievement of acceptance, confor-
mity, and compliance is a complicated process. Here I want to focus on
two related aspects.
The first aspect concerns the way in which claims and demands are
managed in the political and policy process, so that the existing order
can be reproduced without direct challenge. It is here that proponents
of post-Marxist discourse theory employ the logic of difference, which
involves the disarticulation of equivalential chains of demands and
identities via various practices of challenge, institutionalization, deflec-
tion, or negation (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). This logic is marked either
by the differential incorporation or even co-optation of claims and
demands, where their cutting edge may be blunted, and/or it is accom-
panied by the pluralizing of a regime or practices, so that it is open to
new demands and claims, where those in a social field acknowledge and
accommodate difference.5
The logic of difference speaks to the way in which claims and
demands are managed by authorities and power-holders in ways that
do not disturb or modify a dominant practice or regime in a funda-
mental way. What is more, although such agencies are varied, it is still
the case that in many modern societies the government is still a crucial
focus and site of attention in this regard. Here the logic of difference
comprises a complex range of strategies and tactics that are deployed by
governments, which are in turn imbued with various forms of knowl-
edge and expertise. Strategies and policies are thus devised to disarm
challenges to the status quo, and/or they are couched in particular forms
of rhetoric that channel and exclude various protests and interests. Seen
in this light, the logic of difference shares an important resonance with
what Foucault calls the practice of ‘governmentality’ (Foucault, 1991a).
In this conception, government is an art of doing politics, an activity of
204 Poststructuralism and After

governing issues and subjectivities, which concerns the ‘how’ and ‘what’
of public interventions; what Foucault famously termed the ‘conduct of
conduct’ (Foucault, 1982, pp. 220–1).6
But an even better exercise of power is to prevent grievances and
demands from arising at all. As Lukes puts it when discussing his third
dimension of power:

A may exercise power over B by getting him to do what he does not

want to do, but he also exercises power over him by influencing,
shaping or determining his very wants. Indeed, is it not the supreme
exercise of power to get another or others to have the desires you
want them to have – that is, to secure their compliance by controlling
their thoughts and desires?
(Lukes, 2005, p. 27)

This is the most interesting and controversial dimension of Lukes’s the-

ory, which explicitly foregrounds the role of ideology and hegemony in
the maintenance of power and domination. Yet, as many commenta-
tors have correctly shown, Lukes relies on the problematic concept of
‘real interests’, which he imputes onto social actors without providing
convincing grounds for its adoption and acceptance, and he remains
ambivalent between a realist epistemology, which presumes the exis-
tence of strong moral grounds with which to evaluate policies and
practices, and the resort to a moral relativism, which relies more on
a conventionalist epistemology (Benton, 1981; Bradshaw, 1976; Hay,
1997; Shapiro, 2006). In short, Lukes and other rationalists, such as
Habermas, seem to rely too heavily on the rational autonomy of an
Enlightenment subjectivity that is endowed with the capacity to discern
illegitimate exercises of power and to disclose relations of domination.
How, then, to capture the exercise of power that works to prevent
subjects from translating dislocatory experiences into demands and
challenges without recourse to a notion of ideology as false conscious-
ness? How are we to think about the organization and shaping of
subjective desire without simplistic notions of manipulation and ide-
ological deception, which rely primarily on epistemological criteria of
demarcating truth and falsity? It is here that the Lacanian concept of
fantasy can focus our attention on the enjoyment subjects procure from
their identifications with certain signifiers and figures, and the way these
identifications exclude other identifications and interests (Glynos, 2001;
Žižek, 1989; 1997; 1998).7 Of capital importance in this regard is the
fact that fantasy is not just an illusion that comes between a subject
 Rethinking Power and Domination 205

and social reality, but actively and passively structures a subject’s ‘lived
reality’ by concealing the radical contingency of social relations and by
naturalizing the various relations of domination within which a subject
is enmeshed. Indeed, the ‘success’ of a fantasy is sometimes ‘evident’ in
its invisibility: the fact that it supports social reality without a subject
being conscious of it. By contrast, the visibility of fantasmatic figures
and devices – their appearance as fantasies – means that they cease to
function properly. The underlying frame that structures enjoyment and
identity thus becomes manifest and open to challenge.
To flesh out this notion, one can start by connecting the category
of fantasy to our everyday social practices. Here the role of fantasy is
to ensure that the dislocations of everyday life are experienced as an
accepted and smooth way of ‘going on’. The role of fantasy in this
context is not to set up an illusion that provides a subject with a false
picture of the world but to ensure that the radical contingency of social
reality remains firmly in the background.8 But the function of fantasy
can also be related to what might be termed the political dimension of
social relations (Glynos and Howarth, 2007). In this context, one can
say that the role of fantasy actively suppresses or contains the dimen-
sion of challenge and contestation. For example, certain social practices
may seek to maintain existing social structures by pre-emptively absorb-
ing dislocations, thus preventing them from becoming the source of a
political practice. In fact, the logic of many management and gover-
nance techniques could be seen in this light: they seek to displace and
deflect potential difficulties or ‘troubleshoot’ before problems become
the source of antagonistic constructions (Glynos, 2008b; Griggs and
Howarth, 2012; 2013).
Finally, it is possible to connect the logic of fantasy to political prac-
tices. Is it not the case that political practices represent a rupture with
the logic of fantasy, which has a concealing function? The answer is
affirmative. For one thing, even though antagonisms indicate the limits
of a social order by disclosing those points at which ‘the impossibil-
ity of society’ is manifest, they are still forms of social construction,
which furnish the subject with a way of positivizing the lack in the
structure. This means that whilst the construction of frontiers presup-
poses contingency and public contestation it does not necessarily entail
an, ‘attentiveness’ to radical contingency. In other words, radical con-
tingency can be concealed in political practices just as much as it is in
social practices. If the function of fantasy in social practices implicitly
reinforces the ‘natural’ character of their elements or actively prevents
the emergence of the political dimension, then we could say that the
206 Poststructuralism and After

function of fantasy in political practices is to give them direction and

energy by pointing to things that are desired or rejected (Glynos and
Howarth, 2007, pp. 145–52).
Put more fully, then, the logic of fantasy operates by providing a fan-
tasmatic narrative that promises a fullness-to-come once a named or
implied obstacle is overcome or which foretells of disaster if the obstacle
proves insurmountable. The first element might be termed the beatific
dimension of fantasy and the second the horrific dimension of fan-
tasy, which work hand in hand (Stavrakakis, 1999, pp. 108–9; 2007).
The beatific side, as Žižek puts it, has ‘a stabilizing dimension, which
is governed by the dream of a state without disturbances, out of reach
of human depravity’, whilst the horrific aspect possesses ‘a destabilizing
dimension’, where the Other – a ‘Jewish plot’ or the lazy/overzealous
immigrant – is presented as a threatening or irritating force that must be
rooted out or destroyed (Žižek, 1998, p. 192). Our subjective desires and
identifications are thus sustained by the threats posed to our ideals and
dreams.
Consider, for example, a political party or movement that affirms a
set of ideals – a free economy, a strong state, a return to traditional
morality, and a more robust foreign policy – and proposes a set of poli-
cies to achieve them: the privatization of nationalized industries and
utilities, the deregulation of the economy, measures to bolster law and
order, policies to support conventional families, and so on. But in the
same breath, it posits and targets a series of dangerous ‘Others’ – ‘wel-
fare scroungers’ that steal from the public purse, ‘illegal immigrants’ that
threaten indigenous jobs and contribute disproportionately to levels of
crime and disorder, ‘single mothers’ who are unable to care for their
families and need to be properly regulated by the state, threatening ide-
ologies and ‘foreign’ identities that need to be thwarted, and so forth –
all of which prevent the attainment of its ideals and policies. These fan-
tasmatic objects serve both as an obstacle to the subjects gripped by this
discourse – they represent and embody a ‘theft’ of the subject’s ‘enjoy-
ment’ so to speak – but in so doing they thus sustain, organize, and
channel the desire for the (impossible) ideals and policies they want
(Howarth, 2011).
Is this an exercise of power? Yes and no. The creation of a fantasy
or myth always involves the logic of inclusion and exclusion – the cre-
ation of political frontiers that divide the social – and thus entails the
exercise of power. Put more formally: A exercises power over B to the
extent that A creates or propagates a fantasy with which B identifies,
and the grip of this fantasy precludes other possible identifications, and
 Rethinking Power and Domination 207

thus other possible constructions of interest. Both the installation of a

fantasy, and the way in which subjects identify with such narratives,
are initially contingent possibilities, and they involve decisions and acts
that amount to instances and practices of power. But if and when B iden-
tifies with a certain fantasy – when B is gripped by a picture that holds it
captive (as Wittgenstein once put it) – and it becomes sedimented and
naturalized in practices, institutions, and images, then it ceases to be a
relation of power in the strict sense and becomes instead a relation of
domination. Domination, as I shall suggest, thus differs from authority
and oppression in that agents are complicit in their acceptance of struc-
tures and practices, which from the critic’s point of view, can be judged
illegitimate or unjust. In short, then, the role of ideology qua fantasy is
to capture the various ways subjects organize their enjoyment by bind-
ing themselves to particular objects and representations so as ‘to resolve
some fundamental antagonism’ and to cover over their lack (Žižek,
1997, p. 11). Social fantasies thus organize and shape our desires so that
an order, practice, or policy may be sustained with little or no challenge.
They can thereby function to displace antagonisms and demands, thus
enabling the smooth reproduction of a practice or regime.
The role of ideology qua fantasy thus serves to reinforce a practice
or regime by concealing contingency and naturalizing domination. But
it also adds an important dimension in the making and breaking of
coalitions more generally. I have suggested that notions like rhetorical
redescription provide tools for analysing the way subjects are persuaded
to support particular coalitions and projects. But, as it stands, this
notion is still too cognitive and rational, for it does not speak to the
way in which subjects are gripped by particular devices or signifiers,
or indeed where they may not be. An adequate approach to rhetori-
cal political analysis must also take into consideration the unconscious
and affective investments of subjects in certain rhetorical devices, sig-
nifiers, and images. For example, in South Africa during the 1930s,
Afrikaner nationalists promised the ideal of a pure communitarian iden-
tity, which was opposed to British imperialism and African nationalism.
But in articulating this discourse it posited a series of Others – the figure
of ‘Hoggenheimer’: a Jewish imperialist mine owner who ruthlessly
exploited and cheated Afrikaner workers, and a so-called ‘swart gevaar’
(a ‘black danger’) that threatened to swamp the Afrikaner people – which
were deemed responsible for preventing the attainment of Afrikaner
identity and who stole the Afrikaner’s enjoyment (see Furlong, 1991;
Shain, 1994). This fantasy of ethno-nationalist homogeneity threatened
by ethnic and racial difference was of course to lay the basis for the
208 Poststructuralism and After

policy of apartheid and separate development in the 1940s and 1950s

and was to provide points of subjective attachment to Afrikaners work-
ers, farmers, businessmen, and urban elites (Glynos and Howarth, 2007,
pp. 149–53).

Socio-economic structures and political logics

The poststructuralist perspective thus contributes to a rethinking of the

structure-agency problem, whilst reworking the basic categories that are
required to explore its dynamics. Central to this approach is a stress on
the primary roles of politics and ideology in explaining the change and
persistence of various social structures. Reworked notions of power and
hegemony provide greater conceptual refinement to account for rela-
tions of hierarchy, domination, and oppression. But this approach is
often charged with being unable to tackle concrete social structures and
practices. Structures are still deemed to be too abstract or general, whilst
their radical contingency and fluidity renders them unhelpfully indeter-
minate in critically explaining particular regimes and practices in spe-
cific historical conjunctures. In short, for many critics, poststructuralist
perspectives are alleged to suffer from vicious sociological and reality
deficits. In my view, however, more specific content can be added to the
abstract conception of social structures proposed by poststructuralists,
and more can be said about their articulation in particular situations
and contexts. How can this be carried out?
I address this issue by first drawing out the insights of two bodies of
theoretical discourse – French regulation theory and Foucauldian the-
ories of governmentality – and then seek to articulate them within the
framework of poststructuralist theory. Both bodies of theory are adjacent
to poststructuralist theory, though in my view they share significant
family resemblances with its basic assumptions. French regulation the-
ory, as developed by theorists like Michel Aglietta, Alain Lipietz, and
Robert Boyer, provides a series of concepts that enable proponents of
poststructuralism to provide more conceptual substance to what might
be termed social logics, especially the logics of economic development,
as well as furnishing resources to conceptualize the connections between
the state and economy in capitalist societies. Recent discussions of
governmentality help us to elucidate questions of politics and the state
in greater detail and depth.
Michel Aglietta has asserted that his approach to regulation theory
‘is concerned with heterogeneous economic processes in which neces-
sity and contingency, the constraint of the past and the creation of the
new are intertwined’. The approach explores ‘processes that emerge, are
 Rethinking Power and Domination 209

reproduced, then wither away under the effects of the unequal develop-
ment inherent in capitalism’ (Aglietta, 2000, p. 391).9 But whereas classi-
cal Marxists tend to explain these processes via the auto-reproduction of
a closed economic system, or the functional interdependence between
hermetically contained regions, regulation theorists insist that repro-
duction always involves rupture, disequilibria, and qualitative change
(Bertramsen et al., 1990, pp. 70–1).10 The approach thus builds upon Karl
Polanyi’s idea that economic practices and systems are best understood
as ‘instituted processes’, rather than natural and universal expressions
of an underlying individual or systemic rationality or as the products of
inevitable laws of historical development (Polanyi, 1957; 2001).
In general terms, then, as against neoclassical economists and ortho-
dox Marxists, regulation theorists endeavour to explore the historical
specificities of different capitalisms, whose continued capital accumu-
lation and reproduction they take to be improbable. Though varying
through time, the approach focusses on the ever-altering articula-
tions of economic and extra-economic practices and systems that
contribute to the partial stabilization of particular regimes of accumu-
lation, which thus provides a degree of predictability in explaining
their evolution. The research programme has thus sought to char-
acterize specific institutions and practices of capitalism, to account
for the particular crisis tendencies of different capitalist social forma-
tions, and the various ways such crises are negotiated and ‘resolved’,
to provide periodizations and genealogies of different state-capitalist
assemblages, and to explain the way economic institutions and actions
are sedimented and routinized in social systems, even though these
embedding logics are never complete or natural (Jessop and Sum, 2006,
pp. 3–15).

Regulation theory versus poststructuralism?

At first glance, the integration of French regulation theory within the
poststructuralist paradigm does not look promising. Indeed, commen-
tators like Bob Jessop argue that the realist commitments of theorists
like Aglietta and Lipietz are diametrically opposed to the irrealist and
idealist assumptions of discourse theory (Jessop, 1982; 1990; Jessop and
Sum, 2006; Woodiwiss, 1990). At the same time, even if a good case
can be made that regulation theory breaks with economic determin-
ism and class reductionism, which I think it can, then it remains true
that regulation theorists are concerned with economic processes and
practices, and this fact seems to place it at odds with the emphasis dis-
course theorists give to the role of political and ideological practices. Put
even more strongly, if poststructuralism suffers a reality and sociological
210 Poststructuralism and After

deficit, because it privileges the role of language and discourse, then

any concern with these apparently non-discursive phenomena implies
a severe incompatibility between the two frameworks.
But these critiques do not tally with my understanding of regulation
theory or poststructuralism for that matter. In fact, I claim that the
basic concepts and logics of regulation theory are much closer to my
understanding of poststructuralism than other theoretical problematics,
whether of a (classical) Marxist or critical realist type. For one thing, it
is not self-evidently true that regulation theorists do in fact subscribe to
a realist ontology of social relations, as developed by thinkers like Roy
Bhaskar, William Outhwaite, Bob Jessop, and others. In fact, a stronger
case can be made for the opposite point of view, namely, that French
regulationists tend to weaken the essentialist tendencies in Marxist the-
ory and neo-classical economics, whilst strongly advocating a relational
account of economic and social processes.
Consider, for example, Lipietz’s fascinating discussion of method in
his Mirages and Miracles. Drawing on Marx, he begins by guarding
against ‘the temptation to believe in the “realism of concepts”, against
the idea that all we have to do in order to understand the Particular is
to grasp the Universal’ (Lipietz, 1987, p. 11). Instead, he argues that

The Universal is not more than an intellectual systematization of

our practical experiences of the real, and it takes no account of the
concrete nature of the real. According to Marx, concepts thus risk
becoming fetishes: ‘In the language of speculative philosophy . . . I am
declaring that “Fruit” is the “Substance” of the pear, the apple, the
almond, etc. . . . I therefore declare apples, pears, almonds, etc. to
be mere forms of existence, “modi” of “Fruit” . . . It is as hard to pro-
duce real fruits from the abstract idea “the fruit” as it is easy to
produce this abstract idea from real fruits’.
(Lipietz, 1987, p. 11)

And lest we think that this prioritizes ‘the real’, as against the ideal or
the material, it is also important to emphasize that for Lipietz the real
itself is always partial and contingent. Alluding to William of Ockham
and Charles Sanders Peirce, he notes ‘that general laws are of weak help
when it comes to analysing the complexity of particular events’; indeed,
he goes on to suggest that the

truth of the matter is that . . . history has infinitely more imagination

than we have. I mean by this that the history of the human race . . . is
 Rethinking Power and Domination 211

not a subject with a project, but a vast body made up of millions of

subjects struggling against one another. Its history is the history of
their victories and defeats.
(Lipietz, 1987, pp. 10–1)

Lipietz thus deconstructs the real by arguing that ‘the concepts we use
do not drop from the skies’, but arise ‘from the partial systematization of
a reality which is itself only partially a system’ (Lipietz, 1987, pp. 12–3).
Three methodological implications for the scientific understanding of
society ensue. They include ‘(1) the study of the regularities which past
struggles have imposed upon human relations; (2) the study of the crises
which arise within those regularities because contradictions are only
provisionally resolved; (3) the study of changes within those regularities
that result from humanity’s ongoing struggles for or against freedom’
(Lipietz, 1987, p. 12). In short, then, Lipietz’s problematization of the
‘realism of concepts’, together with his stress on theoretical discourse
as ‘the partial systematization of a reality which is itself only partially a
system’, fits rather well with one of the defining features of radical mate-
rialism, and thus with the ontological underpinnings of poststructuralist
theory. This is the idea that the form of an object or entity does not and
cannot exhaust its meaning or identity. Objects are thus radically con-
tingent insofar as they are never completely determined by the form
of our concepts, ideas, or representations. Or, to put it in more onto-
logical terms, their essence – ‘what’ they are – does not exhaust their
existence – ‘that’ and ‘how’ they are something. In my view, therefore,
regulation theory is more often than not a species of radical material-
ism, rather than a species of critical or transcendental realism, which
posits an intransitive set of objects with real properties and propensities
irrespective of social context.
It is true to say that in The Enchanted World Lipietz does distinguish
between the esoteric and exoteric dimensions of social relations, where
the former seems to refer to the external and independent existence
of social relations, whilst the latter designates the constituted forms of
social relations in which social agents are involved and perceive their
own mode of being (Lipietz, 1985, pp. 6–16). However, Lipietz claims
that whilst Marx emphasizes the former over the latter, he seeks instead
to invert this opposition ‘by exploring this enchanted world of prices
proposed, profits anticipated, and wages demanded, and its interaction
with the disenchanted world of blind struggle for ownership of the
social labour product, [so that] it will be possible to discover the key to
the secret of crises, particularly the present inflationary crisis’ (Lipietz,
212 Poststructuralism and After

1985, pp. 4–5 cited in Bertramsen et al., 1990, p. 68). In other words,
Lipietz does not dismiss the world of appearances, but seeks to discern
the logics and mechanisms that structure and form the surface appear-
ance of discourses and practices themselves. Essences and appearances
do not correspond to two separate realms of social relations, nor are they
synonymous with the realist stratification of social reality into three
layers (the real, the actual, and the empirical); they are better under-
stood as intertwined dimensions of social relations, which can, I submit,
be understood in terms of the ideological dimension of practices and
regimes.
First, it is important to note that Lipietz’s distinction corresponds
closely to the distinction between contextualized self-interpretations
and logics (Glynos and Howarth, 2007, p. 3). As we have argued, though
any viable approach to social and political theory must seek to grapple
with the self-interpretations of the actors involved, the task of critical
explanation is not concluded by this passage. Far from it, the task of
critical explanation in poststructuralist theory is to discern the rules that
govern a practice or regime, even though they may not be directly and
immediately evident to the social actors that experience and live them.
This methodological rule is not restricted to my particular understand-
ing of poststructuralist theory, for it also informs Foucault’s method of
problematization of sexuality. For example, when Foucault takes issue
with the ‘repressive hypothesis’ in the first volume of the History of Sex-
uality he puts into question the taken-for-granted interpretation that
sexuality and sexual emancipation provide a privileged way to grasp
the truth about human beings, or that opposing sexual repression in
the name of greater sexual freedom or emancipation is a key to oppos-
ing power in modern societies, or speaking truth to power. Instead, his
genealogies provide a different perspective within which to situate the
repressive hypothesis; this perspective enables the researcher (and lay
actor) to perceive the complicities between the repressive hypothesis
and what Foucault calls the logic of bio-power at work in our modern
societies (Foucault, 1979; see Glynos and Howarth, 2007, pp. 44–47).
What is more, in my view, regulation theorists such as Aglietta and
Lipietz do not shy away from according a constitutive role to the
role of political and ideological practices in explaining social processes.
Instead, they move us away from an essentialist conception of the
economy as a self-contained and closed entity, which determines the
form and character of other spheres of social relations, to the idea that
economic processes and practices are always relationally connected to
other (apparently non-economic) processes and practices. Indeed, in my
understanding of regulation theory, different regimes of accumulation
 Rethinking Power and Domination 213

and modes of regulation, as well as their particular articulations in

specific historical and natural contexts, are as much political and ide-
ological constructs as they are the product of economic logics alone.
As Lipietz puts it,

The stabilization of a regime of accumulation or a mode of regulation

obviously cannot be analysed in terms of its economic logic alone.
Such ‘discoveries’ are the outcome of social and political struggles
which stabilize to form a hegemonic system in Gramsci’s sense of the
term: in other words alliances based upon a consensus (and a varying
degree of coercion) which shape the interests of the ruling classes
and sometimes some of the interests of the dominated classes, into
the framework of a regime of accumulation.
(Lipietz, 1987, p. 20)

This hegemonic articulation of economic, political, and ideolog-

ical practices is evident in their central object of investigation:
regulation.

From social reproduction to political and ideological regulation

One of the key moves of French regulation theory is to rethink the pro-
cesses of reproduction and sedimentation of social relations in Marxist
theory.11 In Aglietta’s succinct words, the analysis of reproduction
focusses on ‘the processes which permit what exists to go on exist-
ing’ (Aglietta, 2000, p. 12) But whereas classical Marxists have tended
to explain these processes via the auto-reproduction of a closed eco-
nomic system, or the functional interdependence between hermetically
contained sub-systems or regions, regulation theory stresses that the
reproduction of social systems always involves rupture and qualitative
change (Bertramsen et al., 1990, pp. 70–1). As Boyer and Saillard put
it, regulationists replace both the idea of general equilibrium and the
analysis of static equilibrium, with ‘an analysis of dynamic processes
of reabsorption of disequilibria caused by accumulation’ (Boyer and
Saillard, 2002 cited in Jessop and Sum, 2006, p. 6).
The logic of this movement from reproduction to regulation finds
a clear parallel in our core idea of an articulatory practice. As I have
shown, the ongoing production of articulatory practices is not deter-
mined by some pre-existing principle or telos, nor by any functional
requirements, but by the contingent interplay of political forces, which
are striving to impose partial fixations of meaning on essentially inde-
terminate elements or ‘floating signifiers’. Hegemonic practices are in
turn those particular kinds of articulations that constitute historical
214 Poststructuralism and After

blocs or discursive formations by establishing political frontiers between

different demands and identities. The outcome of successful hegemonic
projects is the disarticulation of a previously sedimented historical bloc
and the institution of a new configuration of state, economy, and
society.
This point can be further exemplified if we focus on the role of rules
in structuring a practice or regime. The concept of regulation is often
understood in terms of a rule-governed practice, in which heterogeneous
movements or acts are adjusted in accordance with certain fixed rules or
norms. Here the practice of regulation is reduced to the application of
determining rules in which to use Wittgenstein’s memorable phrase, ‘All
the steps have already been taken’ (Wittgenstein, 1967, p. 219). How-
ever, this is to overlook the deconstructive impulse in Wittgenstein’s
reflections on rule-following, in which he shows, for example, that
the application of a word or concept to a particular object or practice
‘is not everywhere bounded by the rules’ (Wittgenstein, 1967, p. 84).
There is always the possibility that in applying or following a rule new
possibilities arise.
Extrapolating from this idea, a more radicalized version of the later
Wittgenstein’s argument about rule-following suggests that every appli-
cation of a rule involves some sort of modification, as each instance
of rule-following is different, no matter how apparently insignificant
that difference might be (Staten, 1984, pp. 79–86). Indeed, from this
point of view, a rule is no more than the instances of its various applica-
tions at any one time, and what is deemed an acceptable ‘application’ is
continuously susceptible to alteration and contestation. Rules are often
understood as fixing the meaning of a word or practice. But if practices
overflow any particular rule or convention, then the fixing of meanings
and practices is better understood as a more contingent political opera-
tion, rather than a rule-based prescriptive operation. And to the extent
to which the ‘war of interpretations’ involves a political dimension, the
latter raises a number of interesting possibilities for the explanation of
social and political phenomena. (Rule-following in this sense is similar
to what Derrida calls the undecidable logic of iterability in which each
repetition of a sign in language is always vulnerable to alteration. This
is because each sign is differential and thus dependent on context for its
value, and because each sign must have the capacity to break with each
and every context and be inserted into a new chain of signifiers.)12
This shared assumption about the constructed and contingent char-
acter of social reproduction (qua regulation) means that the task of
deconstructing any remaining essentialism in regulation theory is not
 Rethinking Power and Domination 215

overwhelming. On the contrary, it is a short distance from the idea

that social forms and processes, such as capital accumulation, are not
automatic and self-generating, to the central role of articulatory and
hegemonic practices in shaping their outcomes. The basic conceptual
machinery of regulation theory can thus be rendered compatible and
commensurate with the ontological assumptions of poststructuralist
theory in a relatively unproblematic fashion.

The key concepts

Of what precisely does this machinery of concepts and logics comprise?
In accounting for the ongoing, yet contradictory reproduction of social
relations, especially economic processes and practices, regulation theo-
rists have furnished a number of definitions and interpretations. Lipietz
has helpfully connected three related notions – a labour process model,
a regime of accumulation, and a mode of regulation – into what he calls a
model of development, which when applied at the national level to coun-
tries where it is dominant consists of ‘the organizing principles of the
labour process, the aims of production, and the ground rules for resolv-
ing tensions’ (Lipietz, 1992, pp. x, 2) The first element refers to ‘the
general principles governing the labour process and the way it evolves
during the period when the model is dominant’, whereas a regime of
accumulation describes ‘the fairly long-term stabilization of the allo-
cation of social production between consumption and accumulation’,
which

implies a certain correspondence between the transformation of

production and the transformation of the conditions of the repro-
duction of labour power, between certain of the modalities in which
capitalism is articulated with other modes of production within a
national economic and social formation, and between the social and
economic formation under consideration and its ‘outside world’.
(Lipietz, 1987, p. 14)

But because the regime of accumulation must be ‘materialized in the

shape of norms, habits, laws, and regulating networks, which ensure the
unity of the process and which guarantee that its agents conform more
or less to the schema of reproduction in their day-to-day behaviour and
struggles’, Lipietz also introduces the idea of a mode of regulation, which
comprises ‘the set of internalized rules and social procedures which
incorporate social elements into individual behaviour’ (Lipietz, 1987,
p. 15). More concretely, it consists of an ensemble of norms, institutions,
216 Poststructuralism and After

organizational forms, social networks, and patterns of conduct that

sustain and give direction to a given regime of accumulation (cf., Jessop
and Sum, 2006, pp. 60–1).
Lipietz and other regulationists accept that not every mode of regula-
tion can regulate every regime of accumulation, and they also argue that
one mode of regulation can assume different combinations of partial
forms of regulation. Importantly, therefore, regulation theorists insist
that ‘the emergence of a new regime of accumulation’ is ‘not a preor-
dained part of capitalism’s destiny’; nor does the sedimentation of a
mode of regulation express in a functionalist way the needs of a par-
ticular accumulation regime. Instead, he argues that different regimes
of accumulation and modes of regulation are always ‘chance discover-
ies’, which emerge in the course of human struggles. Indeed, if they are
eventually partially stabilized ‘it is only because they are able to ensure
a certain regularity and a certain permanence in social reproduction’
(Lipietz, 1987, p. 15).
This basic conceptual schema admits of some fine tuning and speci-
fication in particular cases. For example, the notion of a structural form
mediates between the more abstract concept of an accumulation regime,
on the one hand, and the more concrete idea of a mode of regula-
tion on the other. According to Robert Boyer, structural forms can be
defined ‘as any kind of codification of one or several fundamental social
relations’, which ‘derive from the character of the dominant mode of
production’ (Boyer, 1990, p. 37). For example, in capitalism, regula-
tion theorists concentrate on various forms of monetary constraint,
different configurations of the wage relation, and different forms of
competition. The notion of structural or institutional forms also enables
regulation theorists to distinguish between different regimes of accu-
mulation. In particular, they draw a distinction between extensive and
intensive regimes of accumulation, in which the former are marked by
only a moderate increase in labour productivity, stable patterns of con-
sumption from both the capitalist and non-capitalist sectors, growth is
generated by an expansion of the capitalist sector, in which Depart-
ment I (capital goods) rather than Department II (consumer goods)
dominates, and wages are considered mainly as a cost of production
(Torfing, 1998, p. 115). Intensive regimes, on the other hand, are char-
acterized by large increases in productivity, mass consumption from the
capitalist sector, and where growth is generated by a balancing between
Departments I and II, in which wages are a crucial factor in determining
effective demand and ‘selling’ dominates (Aglietta, 2000, p. 71; Noel,
1987, pp. 311–2).
 Rethinking Power and Domination 217

At the most concrete level, regulation theorists introduce the con-

cept of a mode of development to capture the articulation of the
structural forms of a mode of regime of accumulation and a mode of
regulation at the national level (Lipietz, 1992). The latter constitutes
an ensemble of practices and institutions that is capable of generating
growth, prosperity, and social peace in the context of a global division
of labour (Jessop et al., 1988). The linking together of these different
practices and systems should not suggest that this approach is oblivious
to the importance of antagonisms, crises, structural incompatibilities,
and contradictions. On the contrary, any particular mode of develop-
ment is riven with dislocations, tensions, and crisis tendencies. Yet,
as I shall suggest, the conceptualization of the relationship between
objective crisis-tendencies and the social construction of antagonisms
is not always perspicuous, and more attention needs to be paid to this
dimension of their theory building.
Finally, as I have implied, the basic concepts of regulation theory are
located at different levels of abstraction. For example, the central con-
cept of Fordism as a regulatory complex can be specified at varying levels
of abstraction. It can be defined as (1) an intensive regime of accumu-
lation marked by a balanced growth in the production of capital and
consumer goods; (2) the predominance of various structural forms (such
as an interventionist form of state and different configurations of wage
relation); (3) a mode of regulation that turns individuals into particular
subjects, whether they are ‘producers’ and ‘consumers’ of standardized
mass products or ‘clients’ and ‘voters’ of the welfare state; and (4) a mode
of development that consists of particular articulations of mass produc-
tion and mass consumption, forms of state and socialization, the use of
various policies and instruments to ensure national growth and protec-
tion in the face of international competition, and so forth (Jessop and
Sum, 2006, pp. 124–5).

The task of explanation

But this complex specification raises questions both about the way these
elements and levels of abstraction are connected to one another, as well
as their employment in accounting for the concrete processes speci-
fied by a problematized object of investigation. Here once again the
concept of an articulatory practice is helpful, because it enables us to
conceive of the relations between elements and levels located at dif-
ferent levels of abstraction in a non-reductionist and non-subsumptive
fashion, thus eschewing the temptation to deduce or logically derive
218 Poststructuralism and After

more concrete notions from higher level and determining concepts or

laws. But this means that the different elements are essentially contin-
gent and can be linked together in different forms. For example, as
we have suggested, a particular regime of accumulation is compatible
with different forms of regulation, even though some combinations will
prove less enduring or fail to become hegemonic. Indeed, the regime
of accumulation itself is best viewed as a contingent articulation of ele-
ments that do not naturally fit together. The method and practice of
articulation thus helps us to capture the process of linking together
a plurality of theoretical and empirical elements at different levels of
abstraction in developing a putative ‘explanans’ of a problematized
phenomenon (Griggs and Howarth, 2002a; 2004).
Nonetheless, there are still questions we need to ask about the
explanatory power of regulation theory. In general terms, regulation
theorists seek ‘to explain the rise and subsequent crises of modes of
development, leaving the question of the long-run tendencies of capital-
ism open until enough historical studies and international comparisons
have been accumulated’ (Boyer, 1990, p. 48). But this deceptively
simple objective conceals a range of pertinent questions asked by
regulation theorists. How are stable periods of accumulation possi-
ble? Why and how are they problematized in moments of dislocation
and crisis? How are the particular configurations of elements (regimes
of accumulation, regulatory modes, and modes of development) dis-
cursively constructed? What is more, despite the sophisticated set
of concepts developed by regulation theorists to tackle these ques-
tions, their general guidelines for addressing them are less than con-
vincing. For the most part, they tend to rely on outmoded Marxist
forms of explanation that postulate unproblematized ‘correspondences’
between different structural forms, or which derive or deduce one set
of social practices from a more determinate region or infrastructure.
This can leave the impression at times that the regime of accumula-
tion is external to political struggles and ideological processes, or that
a regime of accumulation is somehow privileged in this explanatory
schema.

Regulation as a hegemonic practice

But there are good theoretical and empirical arguments for not accept-
ing these concepts and for contesting their underlying assumptions. By
building on the work of poststructuralist theorists like Laclau, Mouffe,
Jacob Torfing, and others, the concept of a hegemonic practice pro-
vides an alternative way of realizing the explanatory drives of regulation
 Rethinking Power and Domination 219

theory in a non-reductionist and non-subsumptive fashion (Laclau and

Mouffe, 1985; Torfing, 1998). In this view, regulation is best conceptual-
ized as a particular type of hegemonic practice, thus presupposing and
partaking of the assumptions and postulates of poststructuralism. Not
only does this render a broad range of social and economic relations sus-
ceptible to our various logics of critical explanation, but it also enables
us to do away with any remaining vestiges of essentialism or economism
in regulation theory. From this perspective, the practices and strate-
gies of regulation involve the linking together of contingent elements,
which exist and operate in a particular discursive field, so as to con-
struct particular institutional complexes that enable, without ensuring,
the ongoing reproduction of social relations. Regulation consists of the
ensemble of practices and activities that ensures societal reproduction by
constructing stable frontiers, which can negate or defuse popular antag-
onisms either by incorporating them into manageable social forms or by
displacing them to the margins of the social order. As Gramsci insisted,
it is a species of politics understood in terms of hegemony, where
the latter is a complicated practice that involves the way social forces
‘become a state’ (Gramsci, 1971, p. 53). In this view, the state is best
conceptualized as

a continuous process of formation and superseding of unstable

equilibria (on the juridical plane) between the interests of the fun-
damental group and those of the subordinated groups – equilibria in
which the interests of the dominant group prevail, but only up to
a certain point, i.e. stopping short of narrowly corporate economic
interest.
(Gramsci, 1971, p. 182)

Seen in this way, the various strategies of accumulation that emerge in

the wake of crisis and social dislocation, and which may or may not
cohere into a particular regime of accumulation, do not pre-exist regu-
latory practices, whose task is to represent and manage them. On the
contrary, regimes of accumulation and modes of regulation are co-
constituted by ongoing hegemonic practices that involve political strug-
gle and ideological contestation. Not unlike Gramsci’s concept of the
‘integral state’, modes of regulation comprise the complex ensemble of
organizations, institutions, rules, norms, and public policies that ensure
the reproduction of a historic bloc, though for Gramsci the latter is
organized around a decisive economic nucleus, whilst in my reading of
regulation theory the ‘decisive economic nucleus’ is nothing more than
220 Poststructuralism and After

a retroactive product of successful political struggle. What is more, the

construction and implementation of such blocs involves a micropolitics
that can bring about changed practices, inculcate new habits and cus-
toms, fabricate different identities, and rework the institutions of civil
society.
But, importantly, modes of regulation also encompass ideological
practices that serve to conceal the radical contingency of a system of
social relations, whilst functioning to naturalize the hierarchies and
dominations that inhere in them. Indeed, it is here that the logic of
fantasy and the role of rhetoric are integral in maintaining the repro-
duction of a social order by providing points of grip and identification
for the subjects of regulatory practices. Yet my account of subjectivity is
not exhausted by this ideological dimension of social relations, for the
emergence and institution of different modes of social regulation is not
natural or teleological. On the contrary, it is ultimately the product of
those political agents who take decisions in particular social conditions.
Different regimes of accumulation are thus marked by political and ide-
ological struggles; regulation must also be expanded and deepened to
include contestations and strategic interventions; and ideological and
fantasmatic logics are internally related to regimes of accumulation and
modes of regulation.
More fully, in this perspective, it is the dislocation of existing social
structures and institutions that makes possible a strong version of polit-
ical agency, as new strategies and discourses are made available for
identification and decision. However, in my approach, there are no priv-
ileged social agents, whether states, business leaders, or revolutionaries,
who are ultimately responsible for initiating and implementing social
change. Of course, in any particular conjuncture there will be those
who are better placed to effect social change, but even these relatively
empowered agencies have to construct coalitions and alliances by elabo-
rating discourses and ideologies designed to bring this about. Indeed, as
Gramsci insisted, they have themselves to be constructed as political and
ideological forces. In short, then, when situated within the framework
of poststructuralist theory and its method of articulation, the concepts
and logics of regulation theory will enable us to account for the contra-
dictory logics of various capitalist and non-capitalist social formations.

Remainders
This focus renders regulation theory commensurate with those
approaches that stress the primacy of politics, whilst emphasizing
the importance of ideology in maintaining relations of domination.
 Rethinking Power and Domination 221

Nonetheless, there are at least four aspects that need further explo-
ration. First, regimes of accumulation are themselves the sites of political
struggle at the molecular and molar levels. Both their political insti-
gation, which always involves power and exclusion, as well as the
connections between the different components of an economic logic,
are produced by hegemonic struggles that link contingent entities in
partially complete systems. Accumulation regimes are thus heteroge-
neous systems of rules, practices, and strategies that are constantly
vulnerable to dislocations and crises.
Secondly, the concept of a mode of regulation needs to be expanded to
include a wider range of practices and processes. It should be stretched
in ways that transcend its original conceptualization as an ensemble of
norms, institutions, organizational forms, social networks, and patterns
of conduct that sustain and ‘guide’ a particular regime of accumulation,
whilst promoting compatibility among the decentralized decisions of
economic agents in the face of the conflictual character of capitalist
social relations (Jessop and Sum, 2006; Lipietz, 1987). Modes of reg-
ulation should thus include a consideration of the various logics of
difference that function to breakdown and reabsorb potential challenges
to a regime of accumulation and should include considerations about
the state, ideology, and culture more generally.
Some regulation theorists have endeavoured to capture some of these
processes by introducing concepts like ‘modes of societalization’, ‘soci-
etal paradigms’, ‘comprehensive concepts of control’, or ‘cultures of
everyday life’, which refer to the broader social frameworks and dis-
courses within which a model of economic development is embedded,
and from which it derives its meaning, whilst also imparting in turn its
own distinctive features (Jessop, 1997, p. 292). But the concept of reg-
ulation should be widened even further to include the production and
inculcation of different modes of subjectivity at the linguistic, bodily,
and affective levels. Here the focus on what Deleuze, Guattari, Connolly,
and others have termed ‘micropolitics’ is essential in highlighting the
meticulous practices and technologies of self that inform the strate-
gies and tactics of any particular mode of regulation (Connolly, 2002;
Widder, 2012).
A third deficiency concerns the role of the state and government. Crit-
ics often bemoan the dearth of state theory in regulation theory, as well
as their inadequate accounts of government (Boyer, 1990, p. 41; Noel,
1987). But this lack can be partially filled. Neo-Gramscian state theory, as
developed by Poulantzas, Jessop, and Sum is helpful in critically explain-
ing state practices and interventions in late capitalist societies (Jessop,
222 Poststructuralism and After

1982; 2002a; 2002b; Poulantzas, 1978). The state in this perspective is

not ontologically separated from civil society, the economy, and various
cultural forms, but imbricated in the latter’s constitution and contradic-
tory reproduction. Understood as a relation, the state is best viewed as
a strategic field that condenses the multiple forces that operate on it,
whilst its various agencies strive to strike balances between competing
forces. The state is thus a crucial site of the contradictory practices of
regulation in late capitalist societies.
At the same time, Foucault’s later work on governmentality is crucial
for characterizing and evaluating the multiple practices of government
in late capitalism. Government is here understood in terms of the
‘different modalities and possible ways that exist for guiding men,
directing their conduct, constraining their actions and reactions, and
so on’ (Foucault, 2008, pp. 1–2; see also Dean, 1999; Lemke, 2012; Rose,
1999; Triantafillou, 2012). Although Foucault was not especially inter-
ested in the particular problems and situations where ‘the development
of real governmental practice’ occurred, he does focus on those dis-
courses that speak to ‘the reasoned way of governing best’. For example,
as he presciently foresaw in the Birth of Biopolitics, the installation of
neoliberalism in many late capitalist societies in the 1970s and 1980s
involved the articulation of a novel series of discourses, governmental
technologies and rationalities, which problematized the role of govern-
ment and the state as the drivers of economic growth and efficiency,
whilst seeking to preserve the fragile freedom of the market econ-
omy by targeting and acting upon its conditions of existence. This
project was pursued by defending the precarious rules of the market
order from unwelcome state interventions, which in these discourses
would inevitably distort the logic of free competition, often through
the mobilization of fascist and totalitarian ‘others’, and by cultivating,
regulating and disciplining the identities and subjectivities that were
required for its operation (Foucault, 2008). In short, when both aspects
are considered – real governmental practices and multiple reflections on
such practices - Foucault’s work furnishes the wherewithal to explore
the complex art of ruling, which involves heterogeneous techniques,
rationalities, and forms of knowledge, through which governmental
practices intervene in society and the economy.
What is more, along with neo-Gramscian state theory, this view shares
the idea that states and governments perform critical educative func-
tions that shape cultural and economic practices, though they in turn
are ‘educated’ and shaped by practices in other fields. Indeed, these per-
spectives suggest that we should not associate the state and the role of
 Rethinking Power and Domination 223

government with a one-sided negativity, for this would be to endorse

the neoliberal conceit that governmental practice should be restricted
to protecting and facilitating the ‘fragile competitive mechanisms of the
market’ (Foucault, 2008, p. 240).
Finally, ideological practices are not external to strategies of accu-
mulation and modes of regulation, but are organically connected to
the installation of particular economic forms. In this way, the econ-
omy can be conceptualized as an overdetermined discursive space that
is politically structured and intimately related to other ‘non-economic’
elements. Historically specific regimes of accumulation and modes of
regulation are thus infused by myths, fantasies, and collective social
imaginaries. Indeed, the exploration and analysis of these different ideo-
logical forms can help us to critically explain how, why, and the degrees
to which, such apparatuses grip subjects, or why they fail to do so.
In short, it is here that the various elements that constitute the category
of hegemony can help us to analyse the institution and sedimentation
of particular regimes and modes.

Conclusion

The articulation of French regulation theory and Foucaultian theories

of governmentality concludes a trio of chapters that addresses the prob-
lem of structure and agency in contemporary social theory from a
poststructuralist perspective. Following the logic of poststructuralism,
I began by deconstructing existing pictures of structure and agency,
together with their competing conceptions of structures, agents, sub-
jects, and subjectivity. What is more, this initial critical operation
revealed that there are multiple ways of developing structure and
agency. I showed, for example, that some poststructuralists and crit-
ical theorists radically decentre the role of human subjectivity in
their accounts of social change, thus relaxing the centrality of the
symbolic order in the name of an immanent naturalism or a criti-
cal realism. By contrast, I emphasize that human beings are always
thrown into a world of meaningful structures, so that the specificity
of human subjectivity is still conceded a distinctive place in their
theories.
Building upon dialectical models, and stressing the specificity of
human subjectivity within historically variable symbolic orders, I then
elaborated a dynamic view of structuration that emphasizes the role
of radical contingency, incompletion, dislocation, identification, and
subjective decision. By linking together selected developments within
224 Poststructuralism and After

deconstruction and psychoanalysis, I thus foregrounded the impor-

tance of human subjectivity in rethinking structure and agency, which
rejects the reduction of subjectivity to disembodied linguistic systems.
In a similar fashion, I stressed the importance of affect and emotion
in my account of structure and agency, whilst articulating a particular
understanding of these elements, and I drew upon Gramsci, Foucault,
Laclau, and Mouffe to conceptualize the place of power, domination,
and hegemony in this picture of social relations.
Finally, in response to those who criticize the overly abstract and
theoretically thin conceptions of social structures in poststructuralist
theory, I articulated various concepts and logics from French political
economy and Foucauldian theories of governmentality to elaborate an
approach to socio-economic structures and practices of government that
are commensurate and compatible with the ontological assumptions of
poststructuralism. How might this schema inform our understandings
of the contemporary politics of identity/difference and the attendant
concerns with the relationship between a politics of recognition and a
politics of redistribution? Chapter 7 seeks to provide an answer to these
and other questions.
7
Identity, Interests, and Political
Subjectivity

Chapters 5 and 6 put forward a poststructuralist critique and reconstruc-

tion of the structure-agency problematic and spelled out its implications
for the understanding of affect, power, and domination. Chapter 5
questioned and then radicalized those perspectives that have sought
to transcend the privileging of either structure or agency, and I set
out an alternative nexus of theoretical categories and logics that can
speak more perspicuously to the problem. Central to this reworking is
the idea that this perplexing issue cannot be resolved in a purely theo-
retical or rational fashion, because the problem exists in social reality.
Structure-agency is the site of an ineradicable torsion and paradox in
social relations that has to be negotiated in different ways depending
on the overall goal of the inquiry or the kinds of practical questions
we confront. Of course, theoretical therapies can be elaborated that can
help us to better characterize, criticize, and evaluate particular empir-
ical phenomena. What is more, I believe that the partial therapies
and conceptual strategies that I adumbrated in Chapter 6 on structure,
agency, and power enable us to address other issues in social theory.
Of particular importance in this regard are questions about identity and
subjectivization, and their connection to other notions such as inter-
ests, agency, recognition, and justice. This chapter explores these issues
in more detail.
Questions about identity and difference are often accorded a central,
if not primary, place in critical evaluations of poststructuralist theory.
At first glance, it would be churlish to deny this, as many texts and
interventions in this tradition are concerned to explore the different
ways in which personal, cultural, social, and political identities emerge,
get deconstructed, are challenged, and are transformed. Yet a good deal
of this commentary, which is often damning and dismissive, tends to

225
226 Poststructuralism and After

present a misleading, not to say caricatured, picture of poststructuralist

theorizing. (Indeed, the many misnomers that are encountered in these
commentaries, prompts poststructuralists to inquire into the sources
of such characterizations, for they frequently disclose unacknowledged
difficulties and aporias in the traditions of thinking from which they
arise.) For one thing, many critics tend to conflate postmodernism, anti-
foundationalism, post-Marxism, and poststructuralism, when there are
important differences amongst these approaches, and they often mis-
represent what many poststructuralists actually write or say about the
subject. This chapter endeavours to challenge these misconceptions by
elaborating a richer and more defensible account of identity/difference
and subjectivity in poststructuralist theory, which is both explanatory
and critical. But I shall begin with the alleged deficits in poststructuralist
theory and the tasks that arise from such allegations.

The deficits and tasks of poststructuralist theory

Critics of poststructuralism, as I noted in Chapters 2 and 5, often allege

or just assume that issues about identity formation completely displace
the role of material interests, economic considerations, and questions
of social justice in the name of a ‘politics of recognition’. It is also
suggested that concerns about identity in poststructuralist theory thor-
oughly exhaust their theories of subjectivity and the body. Indeed,
poststructuralists are charged with reducing subjectivity to questions of
social identity, or even worse to little more than the play of linguistic
or textual differences. The subject is thus no more than a disembod-
ied place or position in language. At the same time, it is often claimed
that poststructuralists are unable to account adequately for the agency of
social actors. Here the subject is determined by ‘reified, quasi-structures’
such as discourses or ideologies, which function to ensnare or subject
the individual to the prevailing power structure (Bevir and Rhodes,
2005, p. 180).
In short, in these views, an exclusive concern with identity denies
the materiality of the subject and reduces problems of politics and eco-
nomics to cultural matters, where ‘culture’ is conceived in terms of
language, ideas, and textual representation, rather than social practices
and institutions. Moreover, it is often assumed that language is a reified
and self-enclosed system of signs that is somehow completed divorced
from an extra-discursive and objective reality. Yet, on the other hand,
somewhat contradictorily, it is also alleged that identities are so fluid
in poststructuralist conceptions that differences totally overwhelm any
sense of stability and fixity – any sense of self or subjectivity – so that
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 227

identity dissolves into difference and otherness. In its more extreme

manifestations, poststructuralism is alleged to be complicit with volun-
tarist approaches, in which the subject is as infinitely malleable as the
identities which he or she constructs. In this view, any form of univer-
sality is submerged in an endless sea of particularities and differences
that share nothing in common.
Now, it is certainly true that some poststructuralists have at times sub-
scribed to some parts of this picture. Indeed, a cursory glance at some
classic structuralist and poststructuralist theorists would seem to con-
firm these worries. For example, we have seen how Althusser’s reworking
of Marx’s materialist dialectic emphasizes the idea of the subject as noth-
ing more than ‘a bearer of structures’ (Althusser and Balibar, 1970).
Both Foucault and Derrida make statements at different stages of their
writings that radically decentre or even eviscerate the subject. In the
Archaeology of Knowledge, for instance, Foucault treats the subject as lit-
tle more than an enunciative position within a discursive formation
from which human agents can speak and pronounce with authority
(Foucault, 1972). At the same time, Derrida’s strong antipathy towards
Cartesian or transcendental conceptions of subjectivity, which he finds
in the phenomenological tradition, often leads him to conclude that the
subject is merely an effect of the play of signifiers and linguistic traces
(Derrida, 1981a).
But as a general characterization the allegations are for the most
part systematically misleading. As against this picture, this chapter
endeavours to elaborate a more accurate and defensible account of iden-
tity/difference and subjectivity in poststructuralist theory, which can
be both explanatory and critical. To begin, I shall argue that rather
than favouring either identity or difference, poststructuralists stress the
contingent, constructed, and relational character of identity/difference,
which in turn exposes productive political and ethical paradoxes and
dilemmas. I shall claim further that an emphasis on identity need
not necessarily exhaust the problem of the subject and subjectivity,
which cannot and should not be reduced to questions of identity alone.
Although identity and subjectivity are intimately connected, they are
not the same phenomena and do not pose exactly the same problems.
Instead, by arguing for a shift from identity to identification, I shall
emphasize the way in which poststructuralists can break with determin-
istic and structuralist accounts of human agency, thus making room for
a stronger notion of political subjectivity. Finally, I shall claim that the
concepts of interest and identity ought not to be separated into analyt-
ically and ontologically distinct paradigms, but are best conceptualized
together, so that the fashionable oppositions between recognition and
228 Poststructuralism and After

redistribution, culture and materiality, subjectivity and objectivity, to

name but a few, can be deconstructed and reinscribed.

Surveying the phenomena: An ontical glance

A range of significant empirical phenomena, captured by various

names – ‘identity politics’, the ‘politics of difference’, ‘multiculturalism’,
and so on – place the question of identity/difference and the relation-
ship between self/other at the centre of social and political theory.
Of course, there are many different and competing attempts to char-
acterize these new forms of politics. Nonetheless, it is still possible to
glean a general overview of these different developments. For example,
James Tully furnishes a neat picture of these new forms of politics in
his book Strange Multiplicity by gathering them together into what he
calls the ‘politics of cultural recognition’ (Tully, 1995). In so doing, he
enumerates six sets of demands that have been asserted in the mod-
ern age. These are, first, and most familiarly, ‘the claims of nationalist
movements to be constitutionally recognized as either independent
nation states or as autonomous political associations within various
forms of multinational federations and confederations’; secondly, and
at the same time, pressures faced by states and empires ‘to recognize
and accommodate larger, supra-national associations with powerful cul-
tural dimensions, such as the European Union and the North American
Free Trade Agreement’; and, thirdly, trapped between these ‘large and
volatile struggles’, are the demands of ‘longstanding linguistic and eth-
nic minorities for constitutional recognition and protection’ (Tully,
1995, p. 2).
Bisecting these various claims and demands are a fourth set of
demands, which Tully labels multicultural or ‘intercultural voices’, that
consist of ‘hundreds of millions of citizens, immigrants, exiles, and
refugees’ who ‘compete for forms of recognition and protection of the
cultures they bring with them to established nation states’. And, fifthly,
there are the demands of various feminist movements for recognition
‘within and across each of these struggles for national, supra-national,
minority and intercultural recognition’ (Tully, 1995, p. 2). Finally, but
no less importantly, there are ‘the demands of the 250 million Abo-
riginal or Indigenous peoples of the world for the recognition and
accommodation of their twelve thousand diverse cultures, governments
and environmental practices’ (Tully, 1995, p. 3).
Amongst these various demands, Tully discerns three common
threads. They are aspirations for self-government, calls to reinterpret
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 229

unjust laws and institutions in contemporary societies to accommodate

demands by cultural groups for self-government and rights to cultural
heritage, and the fact that culture is ‘an irreducible and constitutive
aspect of politics’, which should therefore be given the just respect it
deserves (Tully, 1995, p. 5).1 In light of these grievances and demands,
Tully frames his intervention in terms of whether contemporary con-
stitutions can accommodate and recognize cultural diversity, and his
solution turns on the idea that a ‘constitution should be seen as a form
of activity, an intercultural dialogue in which the culturally diverse
sovereign citizens of contemporary societies negotiate agreements on
their forms of association over time in accordance with the three con-
ventions of mutual recognition, consent and cultural continuity’ (Tully,
1995, p. 30).
Tully’s picture neatly captures important aspects of the new politics of
identity, but its logic and style can be extended. Others argue that the
politics of cultural recognition can and should be expanded to include
all oppressed cultural groups and lifestyles, as well as protean identities
and forces that may remain below the threshold of public recognition
(Connolly, 2005a; 2005b). At the same time, these theorists argue that
the ‘solution’ to these questions ought not to be focussed solely on
the constitutional level but should also involve changes in civil society
and micro-politics. For example, Iris Marion Young extends the idea of
identity politics to include the just recognition of a wide range of previ-
ously excluded and discriminated groups, so that the ‘politics of cultural
recognition’ includes sexual minorities, gay culture, and various status
groups (Young, 1990). And Bhikhu Parekh also accepts the importance
of culture in shaping our conceptions of self and group identification by
providing an all-encompassing account of identity, which distinguishes
between personal, collective, and human identities, though he focusses
most closely on the role and politics of collective identities. However,
in contrast to Young, Parekh tends to confine the notion of culture
to particular ways of living that carry a normative authority binding
on a political community, thus demarcating culture from self-chosen
practices and lifestyle choices (which may not need or demand public
recognition) (Parekh, 1999; 2000).
From a different angle, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and others
have developed a post-Marxist stance that extends the notion of ‘iden-
tity politics’ to include all forms of collective struggle, including working
class politics and class struggles (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985; 1987). What
is more, in his various debates with Marxists and critical realists such
as Alain Badiou, Norman Geras, and Slavoj Žižek, Laclau argues that
230 Poststructuralism and After

the construction of collective identities of various sorts, as well as their

articulation into broader hegemonic projects, can be best understood
in terms of what he calls populism, and thus in relation to his concep-
tion of the political itself (Laclau, 2005; 2006; see Geras, 1987; 1988;
Žižek, 2006). Finally, in this spirit, William Connolly’s Nietzschean and
Deleuzian-inspired perspective suggests a powerful connection between
the accelerating logic of global capitalism and what he calls an increas-
ing ‘minoritization of the world’ (Connolly, 2008b). In the wake of these
developments, Connolly affirms a ‘politics of becoming’ that is critically
responsive to difference and otherness, whilst attending to ‘the erup-
tion of the unexpected into the routinized’ (Connolly, 2004a, p. 345;
2004b).2
The appearance of phenomena like identity politics, multiculturalism,
and the new social movements during the post-war era explicitly fore-
grounds the question of identity/difference in contemporary politics.
Yet its existence has a much longer provenance, which some say
stretches back to the very beginnings of recorded human history. Less
grandiosely, it has strong resonances in the growth of modern nation-
alism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and, most vividly,
in the series of anti-colonial movements and discourses of the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries. Indeed, it is now recognized that even
classical working class and socialist movements of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries often overlapped with national and popular strug-
gles, whilst also requiring the construction of particular identities to be
effective. But having offered a quick sketch of the various demands for
cultural recognition by ‘surveying the range of political struggles which
have rendered cultural diversity problematic, causing it to become the
locus of philosophical reflection’, we should also survey the different
theoretical frameworks within which these new phenomena have been
constituted and interpreted.

Three theoretical ‘surfaces of inscription’

On a theoretical level, the current debates about identity politics are

registered on at least three surfaces of inscription (Laclau, 1990, p. 63).
The first surface is primarily descriptive and explanatory, thus serving
as a locus for making visible problems about the nature and speci-
ficity of the new developments, whether it be the novelty or otherwise
of the struggles and antagonisms, or the character of contemporary
racism and nationalism. For example, one of the important debating
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 231

points about the new social movements in the 1980s and 1990s was
how to characterize phenomena as varied as anti-colonial nationalist
movements in the Third World, the Civil Rights Movement in the USA,
the growth of the environmental, feminist, and student movements in
various parts of the world, as well as struggles for gay liberation and
other sexual minorities (e.g., Boggs, 1986; Crossley, 2002, pp. 149–67;
Foweraker, 1995, pp. 40–3) Were these movements new and durable
political forces, or were they continuous with earlier forms of politics,
such as nationalist and working class struggles? Did they bring into
play new social actors and different styles of politics, which reflected
profound economic, sociological, and cultural changes in post-war
societies?
In a more explanatory vein, some social theorists and political sci-
entists have sought to account for the emergence and impact of these
new movements by situating their demands in relation to the changing
logics of capital accumulation in late capitalist societies. These materi-
alist accounts have thus focussed on the interests of the various social
classes and groups that composed such movements, as well as the role of
class struggles in bringing about social change. For example, in his early
writings on the emergence and character of urban social movements,
Manuel Castells endeavoured to develop a structural Marxist account of
the urban system, in which the latter was defined in terms of its con-
tribution to the reproduction of labour power in advanced capitalist
societies (Castells, 1976; 1977; 1978). In this model, significant polit-
ical conflicts and practices were generally explained in terms of their
‘objective interests’, where the latter were deduced from the structural
location of particular individuals in the overall relations of production
and thus indicated what these movements represented and what they
could expect to achieve in terms of social change.
By contrast, other theorists have stressed the role of values or iden-
tities, rather than simply group interests or organizations, in the con-
stitution and functioning of the new movements. Neo-Marxists and
post-Marxists such as Laclau, Alain Touraine, and the later Manuel
Castells, have thus emphasized the constitutive role of values, mean-
ings, and identities in the rise and functioning of these new forces
(e.g., Castells, 1983; Habermas, 1981; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985; Melucci,
1989; Touraine, 1981; 1985). For example, in his later writings, Castells
rejects the idea that all social struggles are class struggles, as well as the
view that social and political identities can be reduced to the objec-
tive positions that subjects occupy in a particular social formation
232 Poststructuralism and After

(Castells, 1978; 1983; 1989). Central to this shift from his previous
structuralist account of identity and movements was a reconceptual-
ization of space and its relationship to social change (Howarth, 2006).
In his new perspective,

Space is not, contrary to what others may say, a reflection of society

but one of society’s fundamental material dimensions and to consider
it independently from social relationships, even with the intention
of studying their interaction, is to separate nature from culture, and
thus to destroy the first principle of any social science: that matter
and consciousness are interrelated, and that this fusion is the essence
of history and science. Therefore spatial forms, at least on our planet,
will be produced by human action, as are all other objects.
(Castells, 1983, p. 311)

This reformulation of the category of space has resulted in a major

reworking of his approach to the city. Whereas his earlier writings
emphasized the objective, spatial character of the urban system, the
arguments in The City and the Grassroots focus on the political construc-
tion of ‘urban meaning’ by various social actors and projects. In this
sense, cities are historical products, not only in their ‘physical mate-
riality’, but also with respect to their cultural and social organization
(Castells, 1983, p. 302).
This emphasis on historicity and the constitution of meaning is
developed in his theses concerning urban social change:

The basic dimension in urban change is the conflictive debate

between social classes and historical actors over the meaning of the
urban, the significance of spatial forms in the social structure, and the
content, hierarchy, and destiny of cities in relation to the entire social
structure. A city (and each type of city) is what a historical society
decides the city (and each city) will be. Urban is the social meaning
assigned to a particular spatial form by a historically defined society.
(Castells, 1983, p. 302)

In this way, Castells stresses the role of political agency in the constitu-
tion of urban meaning. What is more given the appropriate historical
conditions, political actors, such as urban social movements, are central
to the production of urban meaning. His main objective in The City and
the Grassroots is thus to outline those conditions in which urban social
movements can radically transform the form and meaning of urban life
and hence transform their social identities as well.
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 233

But in other more positivist domains of social theory, mainly politi-

cal science and international relations, the notion of identity is often
viewed as just another independent variable to test in an effort to
provide law-like or causal explanations of the new phenomena (e.g.,
Chong, 1991; Dunleavy, 1991). In consequence, as David Campbell puts
it, ‘ “identity” is rendered in essentialist ways as a variable that can
be inserted into already existing theoretical commitments’ (Campbell,
1998, p. 218). In the latter, there is thus a powerful normalization of
both the descriptive and theoretical novelty of identity politics. What
is more, many of these accounts, especially in the rational choice
tradition, concentrate heavily on the role of individual interests and
preferences to explain the emergence of groups and social movements,
as well as their impact on the formation and implementation of public
policies, or in the production of new identities and social forms (e.g.,
Oberschall, 1973).
Secondly, on a normative register, debates about these new phenom-
ena centre on the recognition, accommodation, and management of
cultural or group rights. For one thing, the growth of identity poli-
tics, when placed alongside growing doubts about the universality of
liberal theorizing, has spawned a rethink of questions about social jus-
tice and the basic rules of the modern constitutional state. Vigorous
exchanges between universal liberals, communitarian liberals, republi-
cans, feminists, and post-colonialists concerning the normative import
of identity and difference have at the same time focussed theoretical
attention on the character of liberal political theory, as well as our dif-
ferent theorizations of identity, difference, and subjectivity (e.g., Barry,
2001; Kelly, 2002). But in keeping with much normative theorizing,
especially amongst liberal universalists, the sharp separation between
normative and critical evaluation, on the one hand, and the tasks of
description and explanation, on the other, has tended to rob the new
phenomena of their complexity and texture, thus reducing a rich field
of concrete social phenomena to questions of abstract right and justice.
What is more, as I shall argue in this chapter, though communitarians
or civic liberals are more sensitive to cultural particularities, they still
tend to reify the very identities and subjectivities they extol.
Finally, on a more sophisticated theoretical terrain, where questions
of explanation, critique, normative evaluation, and political strategy
are considered simultaneously, the rise of identity politics has pro-
voked intense debate about the character of, and the interrelationship
between, a so-called politics of recognition and a so-called politics of
redistribution. For example, in her critical engagement with various
234 Poststructuralism and After

poststructuralists and critical theorists – Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler,

William Connolly, and Iris Marion Young – Nancy Fraser makes an ‘ana-
lytical’ distinction between distribution and recognition, though she
accepts that the two aspects are ‘entwined’ in practice (Fraser, 1997a).3
In Fraser’s view, proponents of the former conception endeavour to
bring about more ‘diversity in gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion,
and irreligion by deconstructing the experiences of naturalness and
universality in mainstream identities’, whilst proponents of the latter
concentrate on general issues of income distribution and dignity in
work. And whilst the former group are too often entangled in abstract
philosophical concerns of an ontological and epistemological kind,
the latter run the risk of denigrating the politics of recognition in
prioritizing the politics of redistribution.
Fraser then explores the consequences of these two types of poli-
tics for questions of social justice (Fraser, 1997a, p. 12). Here again the
first concerns ‘socioeconomic injustice, which is rooted in the political-
economic structure of society’ (Fraser, 1997a, p. 13), whereas the ‘second
understanding of injustice is cultural or symbolic’, and is thus rooted ‘in
social patterns of representation, interpretation, and communication’
(Fraser, 1997a, p. 14). This implies that the solution to the first prob-
lem ‘is political-economic restructuring of some sort’, whilst the ‘remedy
for cultural injustice, in contrast, is some sort of cultural or symbolic
change’ (Fraser, 1997a, p. 15). Fraser then sets herself the task of rec-
onciling the politics of redistribution and recognition by proposing a
reformed model.
But before I return to these issues, when I discuss the relationship
between interests and identity, it is important to note that all these
analytical moves operate on what might be termed the ontical terrain.
In other words, they tend to assume the existence of new identities,
as well as the concepts informing their characterization and analysis,
as they attempt to describe, explain, and critically evaluate. Yet there
are hints that the concepts of identity and difference also need to be
explored, as well as their connections to other notions such as subjectiv-
ity, interests, and social structures. In other words, there is a movement
from practices of characterization and explanation, as well as reflection
on various strategic and tactical options, which function on the onti-
cal plane, to a range of explanatory and ethical theoretical issues that
are situated on the ontological level. This is most evident in the vari-
ous exchanges between Fraser, Butler, Benhabib, and Connolly. Now, in
keeping with this movement from the ontical to the ontological, the rest
of this chapter endeavours to bring greater clarity to poststructuralist
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 235

conceptions of identity/difference, whilst linking these notions to wider

problematics.

Theorizing identity: Two problematic pictures

In theorizing identity, two powerful pictures are readily available,

though they are both deeply flawed and can be quickly dismissed. For
a first group of theorists, identities are primordial, fixed, and essen-
tial. In varying degrees of hardness, this picture is discernable in many
nationalist, anti-colonial, and feminist accounts, as well as amongst
some proponents of sexual politics, in which certain identities are pre-
sented as intrinsic and unchanging elements of a fixed human nature,
or as products of closed and immutable environmental contexts. For
example, the eruption of violent and seemingly irrational forms of eth-
nic, nationalist, or racial conflict, usually in far-flung places like Rwanda,
the Balkans, or Sri Lanka, often leads social theorists and commentators
to short-circuit their understanding of such identities and identifications
by recourse to the primordial beliefs and sentiments of particular groups
or tribes, or to an intrinsically aggressive and particularistic human
nature.4
Even in the much more reflexive realm of normative political theory,
communitarians or civic liberals like Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor,
and Michael Walzer sometimes confer a too fixed sense of identity to
social agents – at least as an ideal or aspiration – where identity is rooted
in all-encompassing, not to say saturated, social and cultural contexts
(MacIntyre, 1984; Taylor, 1989; 2007; Walzer, 1981; 1983; 1987; 1994).
In this view, human beings are unavoidably situated within certain
frameworks of meaning – horizons of ‘moral and spiritual orientation’ as
Taylor phrases it (Taylor, 1989, p. 35) – that presuppose a set of common
pre-understandings, which can be articulated by the self in its quest for
self-realization. And this quest for self-realization can simultaneously
lead to the integration of the self in the community. For theorists like
Taylor, identities and selves are thus intimately related to particular cul-
tural contexts, and even though some room is provided for basic rights
and individuality, these frameworks of meaning are still understood
too homogenously and organically, so that there appears little room
for movement and change. The ideal of community has an integrating
force that carries the potential to squeeze out difference, marginality,
and otherness (Connolly, 1991; Tønder, 2005; Tully, 1995).
Poststructuralists and critical theorists in various disciplines have
problematized this essentialist and anti-historicist perspective. Drawing
236 Poststructuralism and After

on detailed understandings of particular contexts, or emphasizing

different theoretical perspectives, they have focussed on the contingent
and constructed character of identity, and they have sought to decon-
struct and pluralize traditions, discourses, and communities that are
often accorded a too permanent and homogenous character (Connolly,
1991; Mitchell, 2002a; Norval, 2001; Said, 1995). On the other hand,
there is a second group of theorists who too strongly downplay the grip
of passionate attachments, so that identities are either understood sim-
ply as instrumental means to achieve particular ends, where the latter
are defined in terms of economic preferences and material interests, or
they are conceived as private cultural or ethical attachments that need
not play any significant role in the public affairs of government or soci-
ety. The former is evident in many rational choice accounts of identity
and social action, whilst the latter conception informs liberal theorists
such as Brian Barry, Jürgen Habermas, and John Rawls, who tend to
deemphasize or parenthesize issues of personal or cultural identity in
the name of autonomous subjects, who have the ‘capacity to form, to
revise, and rationally to pursue a determinate conception of the good’
(Rawls, 1996, p. 312). Strangely perhaps, some postmodernists also stress
the overriding plasticity of identity, in which human beings can simply
choose whatever identity or self they happen to prefer (see Spinosa et al.,
1997, pp. 10–4). For example, in her book Life on the Screen, Sherry Turkle
draws attention to the way in which the Net is transforming the back-
ground practices that shape our identities and selves. She describes ‘the
ability of the Internet to change the popular understandings of iden-
tity’, where ‘we are encouraged to think of ourselves as fluid, emergent,
decentralized, multiplicitous, flexible, and ever in process’ (Turkle, 1995,
pp. 263–4). However, it is a short journey from insisting on the plasticity
of all social identity to the belief that identities necessarily dissolve into
an ever deferring sea of differences. The solidity of fixed and essential
identities gives way to a flux of difference.

The political and ethical paradoxes of identity/difference

It is important to stress, however, that pure form and complete flux

are two sides of the same essentialist coin, as total flux yields noth-
ing more than a changing set of self-enclosed particularities. So instead
of choosing between two equally problematic options, it is better to
begin by insisting on the constructed and relational conception of iden-
tity/difference. This third way is evident in a number of contemporary
social theories (Calhoun, 1994, pp. 9–10; Zaretsky, 1994). For example,
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 237

in The Power of Identity, Castells defines identity as ‘the process of con-

struction of meaning on the basis of a cultural attribute, or related set
of cultural attributes, that is/are given priority over other sources of
meaning’ (Castells, 1997, p. 6). Individuals or collective actors may artic-
ulate a plurality of identities, though this is often a source of anxiety
and tension for actors, both in terms of their self-understandings and
practices. According to Castells, this is because identity must be distin-
guished from roles and role-sets, where the latter are defined by norms
structured by the institutions and organizations of society. Roles include
being a father, a neighbour, a radical conservative, a member of a pres-
sure group, or a teacher. Whereas the influence of roles on behaviour
is mediated by organizational responsibilities and negotiations, iden-
tities are an actor’s ‘source of meaning’; they only exist ‘when and if
social actors internalize them and construct their meaning around this
internalization’ (Castells, 1997, p. 7). Expressed in shorthand, identities
organize meanings, whereas roles organize functions. Meaning is here
understood in terms of ‘the symbolic identification by a social actor
of the purpose of her/his action’, and it is organized around an actor’s
primary identity (Castells, 1997, p. 7).
The key theoretical issue for Castells is ‘how, from what, by whom,
and for what’ identities are constructed, whilst answers to these ques-
tions largely determine the symbolic content of an identity, as well as
its meaning for those identifying with it or placing themselves outside
of it (Castells, 1997, p. 7). He also seeks to connect the construction
of identities to particular systems of social relations, which are marked
by relations of power and domination. Castells puts forward a three-
fold typology of identities in what he calls the network society, which is
his concept for our current age: legitimizing identity, resistance identity,
and project identity, in which each type of identity-building process
leads to a different outcome in constituting society (Castells, 1997,
p. 8). The basic function of legitimizing identity is to rationalize ‘the
sources of structural domination’ by generating a civil society that is
composed of a set of organizations and institutions, coupled with a
series of structured and organized social actors. Resistance identity, by
contrast, which leads to the formation of communes and communities,
‘constructs forms of collective resistance against otherwise unbearable
oppression, usually on the basis of identities that were, apparently,
clearly defined by history, geography, or biology, making it easier to
essentialize the boundaries of resistance’ (Castells, 1997, p. 9). Ethno-
nationalism, religious fundamentalism, nationalist self-affirmation, or
‘even the pride of self-denigration’, which effectively invert the terms
238 Poststructuralism and After

of oppressive discourse, are given as examples of resistance identity.

Finally, Castells’s third form of identity construction is named ‘project
identity’, which transforms individuals into subjects, where the latter
are defined as collective social actors through which individuals reach
holistic meaning in their experience (Castells, 1997, p. 10). This latter
form of identity construction is understood as ‘a project of a differ-
ent life’, but though it is based on an oppressed identity it can also be
expanded toward ‘the transformation of society’ as the prolongation of
its identity formation (Castells, 1997, p. 10). Collective endeavours to
develop a post-patriarchal society, or the desire to construct a religious
order at the national or global levels, are presented as examples of this
logic of identity construction.
In striving to account for the meaning of these identities, Castells
locates their emergence and impact in relation to the macro-social
changes that he associates with the rise of ‘network society’ (Castells,
1996). The latter dislocates the dominant logics of identity construction
in what sociologists like Anthony Giddens have named ‘late modernity’
(Giddens, 1991). According to Castells, the network society is founded
on ‘the systematic disjunction between the local and the global for most
individuals and social groups’, as well as ‘the separation in different
time-space frames between power and experience’ (Castells, 1997, p. 11).
In these new sociological conditions, the usual processes of ‘reflexive
life-planning’ are undermined for all but the small elites that inhabit
the dominant ‘space of flows’. The building of intimacy and trust thus
requires a redefinition of identity, which is completely independent
of the dominant institutions and logics. In these conditions, Castells
argues that the network society undermines civil societies, as there is
no clear connection ‘between the logic of power-making in the global
network and the logic of association and representation in specific soci-
eties and cultures’ (Castells, 1997, p. 11). An important upshot of these
sociological changes is that the search for meaning occurs in ‘the recon-
struction of defensive identities around communal principles’, that is,
the antagonism between global flows and ‘secluded identities’ (Castells,
1997, p. 11). Project identities, where they do arise in particular con-
texts, differ from modernist movements (like socialism) in that they are
not built on the basis of civil societies, which he argues are disintegrat-
ing, but as the prolongation of communal resistance (Castells, 1997,
p. 11). Castells thus proposes the hypothesis that project identities in
the network society grow from communal resistance, which they seek
to perpetuate in various forms.
Theorists like Castells provide a wealth of empirical information
and numerous historical illustrations of ‘identity politics’, as well as
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 239

important theoretical hypotheses, at what we might call the onti-

cal level of investigation. In other words, he explores the character
and implications of the politics of identity/difference in terms of his
(and others) empirical encounters with various movements, groups,
governments, and state institutions, though he also elaborates a sug-
gestive, if fluid set of concepts with which to analyse and interpret
them. Yet poststructuralist theorists seek to go beyond or beneath the
ontical level, so as to explore the conceptual and theoretical under-
pinnings of identity, and its relationship to difference, subjectivity,
interests, and so forth. They are thus interested in the deeper con-
cept of identity/difference at the ontological level of analysis, which
they believe can inform a range of explanatory, critical, and normative
goals.
But here we face an immediate paradox: if the concept of identity
is defined strictly to mean that ‘A is A’ – that the metaphysical drive
governing the category is to ensure that something is what it is and
not something else – then how and why is the interweaving of iden-
tity/difference even possible? As Heidegger has insisted, a key source of
this difficulty is the metaphysical status we usually accord to the notions
of identity and difference in Western thinking. More precisely, he argues
that we take the distinctions between identity and difference, same-
ness and otherness, for granted by excluding, occluding, or concealing
the ultimate ground on which they are based, namely, the difference
between Being and beings. For example, in Identity and Difference, where
he articulates this theme, Heidegger stresses the ‘onto-theo-logical’ char-
acter of metaphysics, in which the latter is concerned with the question
of Being or beings as a whole. He thus combines ontology – the study of
beings – and theology – the study of God – into a new interpretation of
‘Being’ (Heidegger, 1969).
This understanding is based on the centrality of ground as the source
of Being and beings in the Western tradition. In his words,

Metaphysics thinks of beings as such, that is, in general. Metaphysics

thinks of beings as such, as a whole. Metaphysics thinks of the Being
of beings both in the ground-giving unity of what is most general,
what is indifferently valid everywhere, and also in the unity of the
all that accounts for the ground, that is, of the All-Highest. The Being
of beings is thus thought of in advance as the grounding ground.
Therefore all metaphysics is at bottom, and from the ground up, what
is called to account by the ground, and finally what calls the ground
to account.
(Heidegger, 1969, p. 58)
240 Poststructuralism and After

In Heidegger’s view, therefore, whether we inquire into the character

of beings in general, or the highest being and its character, or beings
as a whole, the question of their ground or foundation – the ‘ground-
ing ground’ – is essential. God in this perspective is thus relative to
this prior ground, rather than being the ground itself (Heidegger, 1969,
p. 32). The same is true of the dictates of reason, or the will of a subject,
which in the modern age have reoccupied the position previously filled
by God. Indeed, for Heidegger it is the positing of a first cause (causa sui)
that defines the ground and thus fundamentally represents the Being of
beings in metaphysical thinking (Heidegger, 1969, p. 60).
In this view, the clear categorical distinctions we make amongst dif-
ferent sorts of things are predicated on a certain conception of Being,
namely, the way in which beings show themselves to us as present
entities. But this means that there is an occlusion or ‘the oblivion
of the difference’ in Western metaphysics, so that difference remains
‘unthought’ (Heidegger, 1969, pp. 72–3): ‘Since metaphysics thinks of
beings as such as a whole, it represents beings in respect of what
differs in the difference, and without heeding the difference as differ-
ence’ (Heidegger, 1969, p. 70). By contrast, Heidegger problematizes this
short-circuiting of identity/difference by showing, and insisting upon,
an ontological difference between Being and beings; contingency and
difference resides in Being and makes impossible any ultimate closure of
the ontological difference. In the face of the erasure of this fundamental
difference, Heidegger thus urges us to take a ‘step back’ from metaphys-
ical thinking – and the modern technological ethos it supports in our
‘atomic age’ – and to ‘spring’ or ‘leap away’ from ‘the habitual idea of
man as the rational animal who in modern times has become a subject
for his objects’ (Heidegger, 1969, p. 32). More concretely, he challenges
us to release ourselves from the grip of the modern technological ethos
‘in order to experience authentically the belonging together of man and
Being’, and he urges us to spring in an ‘abrupt’ way into ‘the realm from
which man and Being have already reached each other in their active
nature, since both are mutually appropriated, extended as a gift, one to
the other’ (Heidegger, 1969, p. 33).
At the less lofty heights of social and political theory, poststructuralists
and critical theorists have also problematized the privileging of identity
and the downgrading of difference. They have stressed the unavoidable
interweaving of identity/difference, which cannot be transcended, and
then explored the implications of this paradox for our understandings
of democracy, ethics, and politics (Connolly, 1991; 2005a; Patton, 2000;
Widder, 2002). For poststructuralists, of course, as I argued in Chapter 1,
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 241

a crucial source of a relational and constructed conception is Saussure’s

theory of language in which linguistic identity – what he calls linguistic
value, rather than signification – is never discrete and homogenous, but
relationally structured by the totality of the linguistic system. In this
sense, language is not a neutral medium of signs and symbols, which
simply represents ideas and objects, but a fund of possible meanings
that structures the way the world is, thus enabling us to experience and
think about it in certain ways (Derrida, 1976; 1981a). Poststructuralists
thus substitute the analysis of language as an already existing system
of signs and meanings for the role of words and ideas as autonomous
and determining aspects of social life. Ideas and words are understood
as ‘signifiers’ whose meanings and identities depend on discourses or
systems of significant differences. For example, a term or an idea such
as ‘New Labour’ in British politics is only meaningful when contrasted
with signifiers such as ‘Old Labour’, ‘the New Right’, or the ‘traditional
Left’. Similarly, a policy of ‘privatization’ only makes sense in relation
to other policies such as ‘nationalization’, ‘public-private partnerships’,
or ‘the issuing of bonds’ to raise public money.
As I suggested in Chapter 1, this relational conception of iden-
tity/difference can be extended to all social systems and practices. But
whilst Saussure contextualises meaning within a formal set of differen-
tial units that are implied in any particular act of signification, he does
not take us beyond the essentialism or fixity – let us say the identity –
of the system itself (Saussure, 1974). Working within and against the
Saussurian framework, Derrida’s concept of différance captures the con-
tingency and historicity of identity formation, including each symbolic
system or structure of meaning, as every so-called play of differences that
endeavours to stabilize identity is premised on the active deferring of
certain possibilities. Hence, for Derrida, in every desire for identity – for
the essential closure of something upon itself – there is a necessary and
constant slippage, or what he calls dissemination of meaning, which
problematizes the purity of identity. Accepting the constitutive func-
tion of différance in the formation of identity, Derrida’s deconstructive
readings of identity/difference show their mutual contamination, which
renders the ultimate fixation of any one meaning impossible (Derrida,
1982, pp. 1–27).
In social and political terms, poststructuralist accounts have thus
insisted on the relational, constructed, precarious, and multiple inter-
plays of identity/difference. Thus, for example, poststructuralists have
deconstructed feminist essentialism by rejecting notions of an already
existing category of ‘women’s oppression’, which is grounded on a
242 Poststructuralism and After

simple mechanism of patriarchy, and which thus covers over class,

racial, status, sexual, and ethnic differences between women (Butler,
1990; 1993; Dean, 2010; Fraser and Nicholson, 1990; Mouffe, 1983;
Scott, 1988; 2005). They have also criticized the idea of a universal
‘human essence’ that covertly renders the categories of ‘human being’
and ‘man’ equivalent to one another, thus erasing women as subjects
and agents of history. Postcolonial theorists, for their part, have exposed
the plural, heterogeneous, and sometimes conflicting identities that are
either imposed on the colonized by colonial powers, and/or which are
copied in various forms of political resistance to colonial domination
(Young, 1990; 2001). For example, the construction of a popular black
identity in South African by the Black Consciousness Movement during
the era of grand apartheid served at once to link together a variety of
identities and demands into a common project, whilst simultaneously
concealing a series of class, ethnic, and political differences amongst
those oppressed by the apartheid regime (Howarth, 1997). Finally, in
a similar vein, Edward Said has sought to de-essentialize and decon-
struct the discourses of Orientalism, so that the complexities of identity
on both sides of the divide are rendered visible, and so that other
relationships between self and other may be imagined (Said, 1995).
In short, in the words of James Tully, poststructrualists endorse an
aspectival, rather than essentialist view of culture and identity. In the
essentialist perspective, the experience of otherness and difference are
‘by definition associated with another culture’, whilst ‘one’s own culture
provided an identity in the form of a seamless background or hori-
zon against which one determined where one stood on fundamental
questions (whether this identity was “British”, “modern”, “woman” or
whatever)’ (Tully, 1995, p. 13). By contrast, on the aspectival view, ‘cul-
tural horizons change as one moves about, just like natural horizons.
The experience of otherness is internal to one’s own identity, which
consists in being oriented in an aspectival intercultural space’ (Tully,
1995, p. 13). But, importantly, the unstable and dynamic interplay
between identity and difference poses another set of quintessentially
political and ethical dilemmas. If all identity is precarious, dispersed,
and structurally incomplete, then how then is any identity possible? Are
we doomed to the complete ‘play of differences’ – a veritable surplus of
meaning – in which nothing is fixed and nothing is stable? Do we affirm
some versions of postmodernism, in which identities and selves are
‘fluid, emergent, decentralized, multiplicitous, flexible, and ever in pro-
cess’? (Turkle, 1995, pp. 263–4) Here the question of identity/difference
throws up political and ethical paradoxes, which centre on the question
of the limits and the very possibility of any social identity.
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 243

In a first response to these challenges, poststructuralists such as

Laclau, Mouffe, Foucault, and Said each insist that it is the drawing of
boundaries between an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside’ that ultimately fixes
meaning. More fully, as I argued in Chapter 5, Laclau and Mouffe
thematize this practice of drawing boundaries as the institution of polit-
ical frontiers. In this view, the establishment of political frontiers and
their consequent social divisions emerge via the construction of social
antagonisms, which do not follow automatically from inherent logics
of the economy, given social communities, or the primordial attitudes
of individuals. Instead, they are produced by complicated hegemonic
practices which divide social spaces and confer identity by creating
antagonistic relations between forces, and by linking together different
demands and subjectivities into common projects. These practices pre-
sume the existence of ‘floating signifiers’ or ‘indeterminate ideological
elements’ – those differences that are not fixed by any political project
or social formation – whose meanings are contested and fixed in strug-
gles for hegemony (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, pp. 105–27). Finally, the
primary object of hegemonic contestation involves the production of
what Laclau calls ‘empty signifiers’ or ‘nodal points’ – privileged sites of
identification – which structure a field of ideological elements by rep-
resenting the full presence of structurally impossible totalities (Laclau,
1994). In this way, a hegemony perspective privileges the role of political
processes in the creation of identity and runs counter to those theoreti-
cal approaches which are based on objectivist, essentialist, economistic,
or structuralist assumptions.
In short, then, each identity presupposes the existence of a bound-
ary which constitutes identity by excluding differences, though this
exclusionary and dominating logic renders identity vulnerable to the
subversive effects of boundary formation (Foucault, 1981; Laclau, 1990;
Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). As Derrida insists in his reading of metaphysi-
cal texts, this is because the ‘outside’ qua excluded differences is required
by the ‘inside’ for its identity (see Staten, 1984, pp. 15–9). Consider once
again Said’s account of Orientalism. Though one of Said’s objectives is
to demystify the fabricated and misleading logic of Orientalist discourse
in essentializing ‘the Orient’ – presenting it as a fixed, ‘unchanging’,
and ‘absolutely different’ Other of the ‘West’ (e.g., Said, 1995, p. 96) –
he also elucidates its logic of identity construction. As he puts it in his
‘Afterword to the 1995 Printing’ of Orientalism:

Every culture requires the existence of another, different, and com-

peting alter ego. The construction of identity – for identity, whether
of Orient or Occident, France or Britain, while obviously a repository
244 Poststructuralism and After

of distinct collective experiences, is finally a construction in my opin-

ion – involves the construction of oppositions and ‘others’ whose
actuality is always subject to the continuous interpretation and
re-interpretation of their differences from ‘us.’ Each age and soci-
ety re-creates its ‘Others’ . . . In short, the construction of identity is
bound up with the disposition of power and powerlessness in each
society.
(Said, 1995, p. 332)

Identities are thus constituted and relatively fixed by the institution and
sedimentation of political frontiers that involves the exercise of power,
which set limits on those identities and subjectivities. And this means
that every affirmation of identity is precarious, because it depends upon
and is thus vulnerable to those differences against which it is defined.
Yet, as Connolly persistently highlights, the role of power and exclu-
sion in the construction of social identities poses a further series of
ethical and political dilemmas, for the drive for identity carries with it
the ever-present danger that difference can be converted into a threaten-
ing otherness, so as to guarantee the truth and certainty of a particular
identity. In his words,

[T]he paradoxical element in the relation of identity to difference is

that we cannot dispense with personal and collective identity, but the
multiple drives to stamp truth upon those identities function to con-
vert differences into otherness and otherness into scapegoats created
and maintained to secure the appearance of a true identity. To possess
a true identity is to be false to difference, while to be true to difference
is to sacrifice the promise of a true identity.
(Connolly, 1991, p. 67)

In sum, then, the drawing of boundaries and the creation of identity is

the site of perplexing, and perhaps irresolvable, ethical and normative
questions. But before we engage these other ethical dimensions, I must
add a further set of concepts to the poststructuralist picture.

Identities, identification, and political subjectivity

The paradoxical logics of identity/difference, which I have thus far out-

lined, mean that every identity requires difference and every difference
requires identity. And this dialectical logic goes some way to eluci-
dating the character of social identity, as well as its political logic of
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 245

constitution, and the ethical questions that arise as a consequence. Yet

the alternative poststructuralist grammar still lacks a full account of the
formation of identities, and it still, for the most part, equates identi-
ties with subjectivities, or subject positions within a discourse. At the
same time, it says precious little about the way in which subjects are
gripped or held by particular identities. To advance my argument, I need
therefore to elaborate upon a further consequence that is implied by
the paradoxical logic of identity/difference, namely, that no identity or
difference is – or ever can be – fully constituted. Of course, this is a
defining feature of poststructuralist theory. Yet, if this is the case, then
every identity or difference is always marked by something that makes
it impossible: the impossibility of its full realization and the inevitabil-
ity of its disturbance, failure, and contestation. Indeed, it is the radical
contingency of identity or difference – at least when that impossibility
is made visible – that sets in motion the drive for identity and difference
in the first place.
Having made this consequence more explicit, it is clear that one
way in which our analysis can develop is to move from the paradoxi-
cal logics of identity/difference to a greater emphasis on identification.
The notion of identification is, of course, a central category in psycho-
analysis. Freud articulated various conceptions of identification, though
in general it designates ‘the mechanism through which subjectivity is
formed’ (Stavrakakis, 1999, pp. 29–33). As Laplanche and Pontalis put
it, identification captures the ‘psychological process whereby the subject
assimilates an aspect, property or attribute of the other and is trans-
formed, wholly or partially, after the model the other provides. It is
by means of a series of identifications that a personality is constituted
and specified’ (Laplanche and Pontalis, 1967, p. 205). In this way, as
Stavrakakis notes, Lacanian theory adds two important aspects to the
Freudian conception. First, the distinction between imaginary and sym-
bolic identification, in which the former involves the production of the
ego when a subject (as in the famous ‘mirror-stage’) adopts an image of
herself or himself, whilst symbolic identification contrasts with the for-
mer because it involves the subject being properly situated within the
system of language. But though symbolic identification can in one sense
be understood as a resolution of the ambiguities thrown up by the alien-
ating consequences of assuming a specular identity, it also results in a
necessary loss as the subject must sacrifice its unmediated access to a pre-
symbolic enjoyment. Symbolic identification presumes an identification
that results in the subject being constitutively deprived or lacking.
In consequence, the second Lacanian addition implies that the identities
246 Poststructuralism and After

that arise from such identifications – imaginary and symbolic – are never
fully stabilized, but always precarious and incomplete.
Now, as I argued in the last two chapters, by articulating
the psychoanalytic notion of identification with certain aspects of
existentialism – forging a connection between theorists like Heidegger,
Lacan, Laclau, and Žižek – it is possible to develop a dynamic model of
structure and agency, in which agency and freedom are connected to the
failure of socio-symbolic structures to determine fully the identities and
practices of social actors. Subjectivity in this conception is not simply
a certain ‘position’ within a discourse, but a radical space in the social
order that is itself constitutively incomplete and split. This conception
of subjectivity is predicated on the dialectical interplay between a lacking
subject, the rendering visible of incomplete social structures by various
dislocatory experiences that befall a subject, and a logic of identification in
which subjects are forced to identify with new objects and discourses to
fill the void made visible by a dislocatory event.
There are at least four implications for socio-political analysis that fol-
low from this conception of subjectivity, all of which connect to the
logic of identity construction and the question of agency. A first impli-
cation is that we must distinguish between identity and identification,
whilst affirming the fact that agents have multiple, even contradictory,
social identities. Any concrete social agent is constituted by numer-
ous identities, which cannot be determined or simply ‘read-off’ an
actor’s objective or structural position. However, these different iden-
tities do not exhaust the question of subjectivity. Instead, they may
be understood in terms of the subject positions – the sedimented forms
of identity – with which social actors identify in their ongoing social
reproduction. This notion of subject positions contrasts with radical
subjectivity. In the latter case, the subject identifies with new objects
and discourses when dislocation is made visible. In short, identities
are to identification as subject positions or subjectivities are to radical
subjectivity.
Secondly, the dialectic of identity and identification means that iden-
tity construction involves a practice of filling the lack in the subject.
Indeed, as lack is constitutive of the subject, this means that the con-
struction of any identity – or the linking together of identities into a
common project – is always contingent and precarious. In this sense,
identities are always ‘failed identities’, which never fulfil the desire of
subjective identification, thus rendering them vulnerable to further dis-
location. But this has the function of reinforcing the idea that any
subject is a ‘subject of lack’: a mere void in the socio-symbolic order.
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 247

Thirdly, this dialectical logic is also important because it opens the

prospect of choice and freedom – and thus the exercise of power –
for the subject. As I have indicated, it thus offers a novel perspective
on the so-called structure-agency debate in social and political theory.
On the one hand, it problematizes essentialist conceptions that privi-
lege the determining role of either structure or agency, whilst on other
hand it contests dualistic conceptions which are predicated on an exter-
nal relationship between structures and agents. Instead, it begins with a
‘thrown’ subject – a subject that is nothing but the practices and identi-
ties conferred by its culture or ‘world’ – where the split between subject
and structure is covered over. Yet if both the structure and subject are
marked by a fundamental foreclosure – an impossibility which becomes
evident in moments of disruption – then in certain conditions the sub-
ject is able to act in a strong sense: to identify with new objects and
ideologies. This moment of identification is the moment of the radical
subject, which discloses the subject as an agent in its world.
A final implication concerns the role of ideology. Stated briefly,
the function of ideological discourse in my understanding of
poststructuralist theory is to ‘cover-over’ or conceal the subject’s lack
by providing a fantasy of wholeness or harmony. When successfully
installed, ideological discourse functions to chain or attach the sub-
ject to a given practice or order, thus conferring both identity and
enjoyment. Ideology has the function of subjectivization – turning indi-
viduals into subjects or subjecting them – though this logic is never
complete or totalizing. As Jason Glynos and I have argued, these pro-
cesses and practices are captured by what we call the ‘logic of fantasy’,
which accounts for the way subjects are gripped or attached to cer-
tain objects and signifiers (Glynos and Howarth, 2007; 2008a; 2008b).
In short, ideological or fantasmatic logics elucidate the way in which
subjects are rendered complicit in covering over the radical contingency
or unevenness of social relations.

Identity and interests

As I have intimated, approaches that focus either on the role of inter-

ests or identities in explaining social and political phenomena tend
to assume that these two concerns are mutually independent of one
another. For example, orthodox rational choice accounts of collective
action or political behaviour assume or impute a certain set of rational
preferences on agents, after which they construct parsimonious mod-
els that are tested against all available empirical evidence. Identities
248 Poststructuralism and After

are either excluded or treated as another form of preference. A similar

exclusivity is evident in debates between Marxists and post-Marxists.
Most Marxists focus heavily on the analysis of class or economic
interests – so-called material issues – so that issues about identity are
treated either in terms of an awareness or consciousness of interests or
are relegated to the superstructural realm. Post-Marxists, on the other
hand, are assumed to focus solely on questions of identity, meaning,
and subjectivity to the detriment of material and organizational ques-
tions. However, I want to contest this mutual exclusivity and articulate
these two aspects in a common and non-eclectic theoretical framework.
I begin in a seemingly roundabout fashion by deconstructing attempts
within instrumentalist approaches to incorporate questions of iden-
tity within their theoretical framework, after which I present my own
conceptualization of identities and interests, showing how it may fruit-
fully be applied to the issues in question. These ideas build upon my
contributions to Griggs and Howarth (2002a).

Heterodox rational choice models

Heterodox rational choice models supplement classical rational choice
accounts by introducing the idea of a group identity and emphasizing
the importance of participatory and expressive benefits as motivations
for action. For instance, Patrick Dunleavy argues that group identities pro-
vide vital information about group size and viability to social agents
before they decide to join a group (Dunleavy, 1991, pp. 59–60). This
concept thus captures the ‘something more’ necessary for those decid-
ing whether or not to join a group. As he puts it, ‘unless a rational
actor accepts that she has a subjective interest which is shared by oth-
ers, she has no basis for contributing to the group’s activities because
of its collective benefits’ (Dunleavy, 1991, p. 55). He introduces two
ideal-typical forms of group identity, which he calls exogenous and
endogenous identity sets, to explain the success of different groups.
Exogenous groups, he argues, ‘have an “identity set,” the ensemble
of all the individuals who can join the group, delimited by external
factors’. In other words, the potential members of this ideal-typical
group consist of all those who ‘share a common situation defined out-
side their individual or collective control’ (Dunleavy, 1991, pp. 54–5).
Endogenous groups, by contrast, are constituted simply by the articula-
tion of ‘like-minded people’ (Dunleavy, 1991, p. 55). The individuals of
the group itself determine what members of it share. Dunleavy argues
that ‘exogenous groups are always easier to organize than endogenous
groups’, because in the former ‘group identity is grounded in people’s
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 249

social situation’, whereas in the latter individuals join groups because

they have ‘expressive motivations, grounded in their personal values’
(Dunleavy, 1991, p. 68).
Complexifying this account, Dennis Chong incorporates non-
material sources of individual motivation alongside selective material
incentives and benefits.5 He suggests that certain activists and leaders per-
ceive participation and the feelings of solidarity it engenders as reward
in itself (Byrne, 1997, p. 42). These expressive benefits can themselves be
regarded as selective incentives as they are conditional upon participat-
ing in movements, and they are rational in that they satisfy personal
needs and feelings. Psychological incentives include the ‘feelings of effi-
cacy, self-esteem, righteousness, and competence that are part and parcel
of playing an active role in the affairs of society’ (Chong, 1991, p. 233).
Social incentives arise from the view, unacknowledged in some ratio-
nal choice perspectives, that rational actors are social beings inserted
into ongoing social relationships through which they attain a sense of
identity and self-esteem. Pressures to join and participate in groups and
movements are a product of attitudes such as ‘the desire to gain or sus-
tain friendships, to maintain one’s social standing, and to avoid ridicule
and ostracism’ (Chong, 1991, pp. 34–5, cited in Byrne, 1997, p. 43). Such
desires ‘are all social goals that constitute selective incentives for indi-
viduals to participate in collective action’ (Chong, 1991, pp. 34–5, cited
in Byrne, 1997, p. 43).
However, even these approaches fail to escape the deficiencies of
rationalist explanation. First, they fail to consider the emergence and
formation of preference structures, thus precluding the possibility that
preferences are altered, or even constructed, in the process of making
decisions. Secondly, they find it difficult to account for the context depen-
dence of strategies, and the changing nature of strategic interaction over
time (Hirschman, 1982, pp. 9–10). Thirdly, they retain a narrow con-
ception of social agents as essentially self-interested maximizers, which
relegates other motivations for action to mere supplements of this essen-
tial characteristic. In other words, along with the classical instrumental
model, the identities are given and self-evident, such that, as Hirschman
notes, the subjects of their analyses are without a history (Hirschman,
1982, p. 79). This means that key questions pertaining to the identi-
ties of agents, as well as their agency in relation to social structures, are
not properly addressed and analysed.6 Hence in neo-rationalist models
of collective action, the concepts of interest and identity are related,
though questions of identity are ultimately viewed as another means
for rational agents to pursue and maximize their own self-interest. The
250 Poststructuralism and After

purely instrumental and strategic paradigm is thereby retained. Indeed,

Dunleavy defines identity as ‘the recognition of a subjective interest
shared with others’ (Dunleavy, 1991, p. 57), and he is unable to pro-
vide the conditions of possibility for group identities to emerge, form,
and be ‘lived out’. It is to these questions that I now turn.

Social and political identities

Post-Marxist and poststructuralist theories of discourse such as those
developed by Michel Foucault, Ernesto Laclau, and Chantal Mouffe pro-
vide an important starting point for rethinking the concepts of identity
and interest, and their interconnectedness (Foucault, 1972; Laclau and
Mouffe, 1985). As I have argued, identities are contingent constructs, the
products of social and political identifications with the roles and subject
positions made available by historically produced discourses (Howarth,
2000a). Typically, for instance, a prospective direct action protester
might identify with the role of an eco-warrior, which has emerged as
a specific subject position in contemporary environmental movements
and their discourses. This subject position provides a place from which
an individual can speak and act. But even more strongly, the role of
radical agency or subjectivity is to constitute these very points of iden-
tification, when in conditions where the dislocatory character of social
structures is rendered visible, subjects are compelled to act or decide in
a ‘foundational fashion’.
Furthermore, in this theoretical framework, identities are always dou-
bly differentiated. On the one hand, they are internally related to different
subject positions within a discourse. For instance, within the UK envi-
ronmental movement and its discourse, eco-warriors may co-exist with,
and merely differ from, institutionalized actors such as Friends of the
Earth or Transport 2000. On the other hand, identities acquire their
meaning by being constituted and defined against other identities. For
instance, the environmental movement’s identity will be defined by
its opposition to industrialists, polluters, the transport lobby, and so
on. Thus, social identities require the drawing of boundaries between
insiders and outsiders, usually manifest in the constitution of others
or scapegoats who are presented as blocking the full constitution of
identity by the agent concerned (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, pp. 122–7).
This political construction of identity via the creation of boundaries
involves the production of empty signifiers and the discourses within
which they function. Empty signifiers represent both that which is lack-
ing in a group or agency – that which is preventing them from achieving
their identity – as well as the means for this obstacle to be overcome
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 251

and fulfilled (Laclau, 1996, pp. 38–40). The basic idea of an empty sig-
nifier is that political ideologies are built around social meanings that
accommodate divergent interests and identities. For specific differences
or meanings to perform this function, they must be emptied of par-
ticular content, thus coming to play a more universal role, and their
meaning is defined negatively by what they oppose. For example, in
the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa, the idea of black-
ness linked different groups (Africans, Indians, Coloureds, and different
social classes and status groups) by making them all ideologically equiv-
alent to one another by opposing them to white racism (Howarth, 1997,
pp. 51–78; 2000b). As this coalition of groups and agents was extended
to incorporate a growing number of differences, the content of blackness
became more and more indeterminate, that is, more empty. In the case
of black consciousness, the meaning of blackness came to be defined in
purely negative terms. To be black was to be opposed to white racism.
Empty signifiers are thus never completely devoid of meaning, but they
are tendentially emptied as new elements are added to a chain of equiva-
lences, and the signifier becomes more abstract. Empty signifiers are thus
means of representation that enable the building of alliances between
different groups and identities by positing an enemy to be opposed and
proposing solutions to the problems facing groups (Howarth, 1997).
Within discourse theory, three theoretical conditions have to be sat-
isfied for the emergence and functioning of empty signifiers. These are
the availability of potential signifiers, their credibility as means of signi-
fication and interpellation, and the presence of strategically placed agents
who can construct and deploy empty signifiers (Howarth, 2000b; Laclau,
1990, p. 66). But there are no a priori means of establishing whether
these three conditions will give rise to the creation of an empty signifier
that holds different demands together. Careful empirical investigation is
needed to determine how and why any particular difference or signifier
can and does perform this role (see Griggs and Howarth, 2002a; 2004;
2007; 2013).
These condensed remarks endeavour to steer a course between essen-
tialist or expressivist conceptions of identity, in which the identities of
actors are primordial or the product of an authentically conceived self,
and a purely instrumental viewpoint, in which identities are simply
manipulated for political and material advantage.7 From my perspec-
tive, identities are strategic constructs, but constructions that are always
more or less sedimented in any particular conjuncture. Such degrees of
sedimentation make possible the production of new identities, but do
not allow all and every possible form of identification to be actualized.
252 Poststructuralism and After

An important condition for the emergence of new identities is the dis-

location of existing discursive structures and the identities they confer.
In a situation where identities are threatened – for example, the build-
ing of a new runway – social actors may need to reconstruct and redefine
their identities to deal with this new situation, and it is precisely in this
context that new forms of political agency are likely to arise, as subjects
construct and identify newly constructed and available discourses.

Interests
How can this approach help us to think about interests? To begin, it
is important to stress that interests are always discursive constructs,
displaying the same contingency and historicity as identities. More
importantly, they are always relative to historically positioned agents
with sedimented forms of identity. To define and constitute interests is
thus a political project in two senses. On the one hand, interests cannot
be assumed to pre-exist social agents (whether as subjective preferences
or as real entities that are imputed on agents by external observers), nor
can they be assumed to exhibit a content that is wholly objective, in the
sense that they are ‘concerned with the matters of the world of things in
which men move, which physically lies between them and out of which
arise their specific, objective, worldly interests’ (Arendt, 1958, p. 182).
Instead, they are constructed politically and discursively via hegemonic
projects; or, to put it in Arendt’s terms, ‘interests constitute, in the word’s
most literal significance, something which inter-est, which lies between
people and therefore can relate and bind them together’ (Arendt, 1958,
p. 182). On the other hand, agents themselves are historical and politi-
cal products whose identities are contingent upon their relation to other
identities. It may seem obvious, then, but interests are always the inter-
ests of particular agents – and both the identities, and the interests that
are relative to them, can never be assumed, but are strategic outcomes.8
As a consequence of this reformulation, the calculations and strate-
gizing of individual actors, as evident in instrumental approaches, are
always relative to a particular kind of subjectivity, namely, the self-
interested maximizers produced by and functional to existing capitalist
markets (Weale, 1992, p. 61). This schema enables Dunleavy’s idea of
group identity to assume its full significance. The distinction between
endogenous and exogenous group identities is useful as long as both are
predicated on the ontological primacy of identity; that is to say, even
in endogenous identity sets, the formation of the group presupposes
the construction of a group identity, with all the theoretical conditions
that we have already sketched out. Moreover, in this view, real interests
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 253

form part of the rhetoric of political persuasion by which actual; that

is to say, historical and discursively specific interests are politically con-
structed. Thus, the attribution of interests is a strategic operation (Laclau
and Mouffe, 1985, pp. 153–4).
The implications of this model are important for addressing the prob-
lems raised in this chapter, as they enable us to understand the actions
of groups by exploring relationships between the interests and identities
of the agents. On the one hand, they allow us to account for the fact
that agents with different identities may come to share the same inter-
ests. For example, a common demand expressed by a range of groups
or subjects in a particular context – citizens in community organiza-
tions, working class men in trade unions, unemployed youth, and local
businessmen – could be articulated by those who are united in their
desire to achieve a particular aim, even though they might have dif-
ferent identities and give different interpretations of the interests they
pursue. On the other hand, social actors with the same identities may
construct different interests. For instance, motorists may share the iden-
tity of being a motorist and yet have widely different interests. Some
might agree with imposing fuel taxes in the hope that public transport
is improved and becomes a feasible option, whilst others may desire to
have lower fuel taxes and not wish to improve public transport. The
same might be true of environmental campaigners, when differences
arise over the advantages and disadvantages of building nuclear power
stations. And, finally, of course, the malleability of both identity and
interest constructions means that both can be articulated in different
ways via the operation of political logics and practices.

The role of ideas

One further question that arises in this regard concerns the role of
ideas in explaining historical change, which is an issue that returns
us to classical set of questions in social and political theory. Consider
first a classical formulation of the problem, which was penned by John
Maynard Keynes in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money:

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they

are right and wrong, are more powerful than is commonly under-
stood. Indeed, the world is ruled by very little else. Practical men, who
believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influ-
ence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in
authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from
254 Poststructuralism and After

some academic scribbler of a few years back. Soon or late, it is ideas,

and not vested interests, which are dangerous, for good or evil.
(J. M. Keynes, cited in Marquand and Seldon, 1996, p. 5)

This oft-quoted passage provides a strong case for the independent,

causal power of ideas in shaping history, policy, and international
affairs. As against this idealist stance, at least for some, Marxists and
sundry naturalists and realists deny the autonomy of ideas in favour of
underlying material conditions and economic processes. In the words
of Marx and Engels, the materialist conception of history ‘does not
explain practice from the idea but explains the formation of ideas
from material practice’ (Marx and Engels, 1970, p. 58). Indeed, argu-
ing from these premises, Eric Hobsbawm concludes that a concern with
the impact of ideas is ‘an extremely misleading and confusing one’,
especially ‘when vested interest, practical politics or other untheoreti-
cal matters are involved’. Reminding us of Marx’s famous dictum that it
is not men’s consciousness that determines their material existence, but
social existence that determines consciousness, he argues that it ‘was not
the intellectual merits of Keynes’ General Theory which defeated Trea-
sury orthodoxy, but the great depression and its practical consequences’
(Hobsbawm, 1973, p. 130). Even Max Weber, Marx’s great intellectual
adversary, claims that it is ‘not ideas, but material and ideal interests’
that ‘directly govern men’s conduct’, although, of course, Weber imme-
diately qualifies this assertion with the proviso that ‘very frequently the
“world images” that have been created by “ideas” have, like switch-
men, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the
dynamic of interest’ (M. Weber, cited in John, 1998, p. 144).
Ideas versus interests; the ideational versus the material; the beliefs
and preferences of human agents versus objective social structures and
institutions; discursive versus non-discursive or even extra-discursive
practices: these conceptual distinctions define the parameters of much
contemporary debate about the emergence, sedimentation, and trans-
formation of social practices and regimes. But do these binary oppo-
sitions mislead, rather than clarify, our understanding of politics and
policymaking practices? Do they obscure our understanding of ideas and
interests, for example, whilst insinuating a search for causal connections
and directions, when causal analysis is not the only or appropriate way
of proceeding? I will answer these questions in the affirmative, suggest-
ing that a properly elaborated poststructuralist approach to social and
political change provides a better way to conceptualize the intertwining
of ideas, interests, and agency, and thus our analysis of historical change
and stability.
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 255

Standard models
We have already seen (in this chapter and Chapter 4) how mainstream
rationalist explanations of social change are generally couched in the
language of interests, preferences, and the instrumental calculations of
individuals and groups. Such accounts thus posit a split between ideas
and interests, and respond to questions of social and political change by
emphasizing the primacy of interests and by recourse to a positivist epis-
temology. For example, classical rational choice theorists explain social
change in terms of the instrumental calculations of self-interested social
actors, where social actors are attributed a fixed set of preferences that
precede the exigencies and contingencies of the social world. Conceived
of in this way, preferences enable actors to evaluate and choose courses
of action that best satisfy their preferences, thus maximizing their inter-
ests. In this model, for instance, individuals will only join groups and
engage in collective action to achieve social and policy change, if there is
a selective incentive that is dependent upon group membership. In the
absence of such selective incentives, rational individuals will tend to
free-ride because the costs of membership are likely to exceed the
benefits they obtain regardless of their involvement (e.g., Olson, 1965).
Rational choice accounts usefully problematize pluralist understand-
ings of the relationship between individuals and groups, as well as the
internal dynamics of groups, but the inherent primacy of interests fails
to conceptualize the relationship between ideas and interests. Ideas are
simply tools or resources at the disposal of instrumental social actors.
At best, they are ‘focal points’ that facilitate co-ordinated action such
that the concept of ‘ideas’ could be replaced by that of ‘information’
(Blyth, 1997, pp. 229–50). Moreover, as besets their epistemological and
methodological assumptions, there is no place for the social construc-
tion of interests or the role of social actors in defining complex policy
issues and external pressures. The identity of social actors is assumed
to be that of self-interested ‘utility maximizers’, leaving the subjects of
their analyses little more than ahistorical cyphers (Hirschman, 1982,
p. 85). Key questions about the identities and agency of social actors
in relation to social structures are thus not addressed and analysed.
In short, there is a failure to recognize that interests can be constructed
in different ways in various circumstances for different purposes. The
result is a logical fallacy in mainstream interest approaches in which
preferences are simply read-off observed behaviour, whilst they are also
used to account for the pattern of behaviour that was observed in the
first place (Blyth, 1997, p. 233).
More recently, some analysts have contested the primacy of interests
and preferences, whilst emphasizing the role of frames, the transmission
256 Poststructuralism and After

of ideas, narratives, traditions, and advocacy as key determinants in the

explanation of social change and policy decisions (e.g., Blyth, 2002;
Richardson, 2000). Ideational accounts recognize how ideas structure
social actors’ understanding of their interests and the world around
them, so that actors work within policy frames or paradigms, which
establish a hierarchy of values, norms, and codes for interpreting prob-
lems and guiding behaviour in various social settings and policy con-
texts. Such frames also shape their various forms of collective action
as they seek to bring about social and political change (Griggs and
Howarth, 2002b, pp. 106–8).
But whilst ideational accounts raise new challenges for thinking about
social change, it is not sufficient to just substitute the primacy of ideas
and beliefs for those of interests and preferences. Instead, as Peter John
argues, ideational accounts must ‘propose a theory which can both
take account of the complexity of the political world and explain why
an idea can suddenly take hold and become implemented as a policy
choice’ (John, 1999, p. 40). Such a theory would require an understand-
ing of the relationship between ideas and interests, and its impact on
questions of social structure and political agency. It would also have to
examine to what extent ideas or interests drive the behaviour of social
actors in the policy process; how far the recognition of external pres-
sures by social actors and their subsequent interventions are mediated
by their own constructions; and to what extent social actors are free and
rational choosers or mere ‘bearers of structures’ (Griggs and Howarth,
2002b, p. 97).

Colin Hay’s ideational account

Colin Hay and his various co-authors (including Andreas Gofas and
Ben Rosamond) have offered a solution to these and other problems.
It is not possible, of course, to provide a comprehensive picture of his
theoretical approach, as it has evolved from his erstwhile realist orienta-
tion to what he now calls ‘discursive’ or ‘constructivist institutionalism’
(Hay, 2002; 2007). But some basic features of his approach can be dis-
cerned. As against the standard models of political analysis, which I have
just outlined, he accords ideas an ontological role in explaining policy
change. Indeed, he argues that in making ideas a central component
of political analysis, the orthodox positivist models of social science
have to be reworked. What is more, the ontological centrality of ideas is
not confined to ‘conditions of uncertainty’ – those temporary situations
when standard models do not apply – but are a constitutive element of
any plausible explanation of change and stabilization. In part, this is
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 257

because ‘conditions of uncertainty’ are not exceptional, but ‘a universal

and timeless human condition’ (Gofas and Hay, 2010, p. 48).
More substantively, in his view, ideas partly constitute practices and
institutions, as they become concretized in particular routines and
modes of organization. But the resultant policies are always shaped by
the actions and reactions of external circumstances. The institutional
system may be sedimented into a stabile equilibrium, or face crises and
instabilities of various sorts. Crucial to the latter – what may be termed
a ‘punctuated equilibrium’ – is the role of ideas and discourses, where
the latter is composed of ‘structured sets of ideas, often in the form of
implicit and sedimented assumptions, upon which actors might draw
in formulating strategy and, indeed, in legitimating strategy pursued for
quite distinct ends’ (Hay and Rosamond, 2002, p. 151). In this sense, dis-
courses ‘exist independently of the actors who draw upon them’; they
provide, in the words of Hay and Rosamond, ‘an ideational context – a
repertoire of discursive resources in the form of available narratives and
understandings at the disposal of political actors’, who can use them
for strategic purposes (Hay and Rosamond, 2002, p. 151). ‘Rhetoric’, in
this approach, thus refers ‘to the strategic and persuasive deployment of
such discourses, often in combination, as means to legitimate specific
courses of action, policy initiatives, and so forth’ (Hay and Rosamond,
2002, p. 152; see also Rosamond 1999; 2000). Ideas, then, expressed in
the form of discourses and rhetoric, constitute causal mechanisms that
can independently produce certain effects with respect to the emergence
of policy and social change more generally.
In his more recent writings, Hay has begun to weaken his previously
held assumption that human agents act in their own self-interest, so
that in his now more constructivist understanding, interests are defined
in terms of ‘an actor’s subjective preferences as to the things she val-
ues and the relative values she assigns to the desires she can imagine’,
though he still retains the view that human agents do in certain circum-
stances act strategically (Gofas and Hay, 2010, p. 50). But he continues
to argue that ideas constitute causal mechanisms that can indepen-
dently produce certain effects. This non-Humean or realist concept of
causality replaces the idea of constant conjunctions with the existence
of generative mechanisms that may or may not be observable.
Hay’s interventions are crucial in enabling us to problematize and
reconstruct the parameters of the current debate, though there are still
some significant queries and blindspots. He and his co-authors talk
about discourse and rhetoric, but they do not provide an articulated
theoretical account of this concept and their approach to discourse
258 Poststructuralism and After

analysis. They extol the importance of ideas, yet they do not fur-
nish a clear conception of this and other notions. What is more, his
sophisticated understanding of structure, agency, and power can in my
view be enhanced and further developed by taking seriously recent
developments in poststructuralist theory. And finally, on a methodolog-
ical level, his stress on causal mechanisms raises questions about the
appropriateness of this language from a post-positivist point of view.

A poststructuralist perspective
How, then, can this approach inform an account of the role of ideas in
explaining social change? As I have argued in this book, I take the con-
cept of discourse to be a multi-dimensional notion that encompasses
a practice, a system, and a condition. In the first place, discourse is an
articulatory practice that constitutes social relations and formations, and
constructs their meaning. It is articulatory in that it links together con-
tingent elements into relational systems, in which the identity of the
elements is modified as a result of the practice. For example, in the con-
struction of New Right discourse and policies in the UK and elsewhere
during the 1970s and 1980s, organic intellectuals in various political
parties and movements linked together demands for a ‘free economy’,
a ‘strong state’, and a return to ‘traditional morality’, though these
elements did not necessarily cohere or fit together in a natural way.
They were not essential components of right-wing discourse, but, strictly
speaking, contingent elements that were hooked together in a novel
way. This means, thirdly, that an important condition for any articula-
tory practice (including hegemonic practices) is the radical contingency
of all social and natural elements, which can always be constructed in
different ways (Howarth, 2000a; 2010a).
It is important to stress that this conception of discourse analysis does
not reduce human actions and ideas to closed systems of discursive
practice. Just as Derrida argues that there can be no ‘saturated con-
texts’ of meaning, as every sign can be ‘grafted’ onto an infinite number
of linguistic chains, so Laclau and Mouffe argue that social structures
are never closed and homogeneous systems of practice (Derrida, 1976;
1982). Rather, they are incomplete and undecidable orders of practice
and meaning that contain a plurality of ‘repressed’ meanings and pos-
sibilities, which in times of crisis and dislocation can be reactivated
and actualized in different ways (see Griggs and Howarth, 2013; Laclau,
1990).
As I argued in Chapter 5, such theoretical and conceptual resources
make it possible to rethink the character of human agency. As against
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 259

the voluntarist connotations of rational choice models of agency, in

which individual actors make decisions on the basis of rational calcu-
lations, as well as the determinism of structuralist accounts, in which
social actors are little more than ‘bearers of structures’, the discursive
model argues that agency is only possible when contingent social struc-
tures fail to confer identities to social actors. In other words, it is only in
conditions in which actors are unable to identify in the ‘normal’ ways
that agents take decisions to reconstruct the discourses, rules, and poli-
cies of social life. This occurs in situations when social structures are in
crisis or are dislocated by events beyond their control (Laclau, 1990).
But what more can be said about the role of ideas and their connection
to discourse, structure, and human agency? Here it is possible to deduce
a negative and positive set of consequences from my poststructuralist
account of discourse and practice, which emerges from the arguments of
this book. On the negative side, it is important to deflate the metaphys-
ical status of ideas in the Western tradition. Without attempting to con-
struct a genealogy of the concept of ‘ideas’ in Western thought, which
would stretch back inter alia to the philosophies of Plato, Descartes,
Hegel and Husserl, suffice it to note the essentialist and idealist connota-
tions of the dominant metaphysical understandings of this notion. Ideas
in this tradition are generally understood as unchanging expressions of
the mind, or the direct products of thinking, which are then seen to
represent or even constitute a world of externally existing objects.
This particular picture of ideas is problematical when extended to
social and political analysis. Substantively, it leads to the idealist view
that ideas determine social processes such as social change, policymak-
ing, interest formation, and so forth. And on a methodological level, it
raises awkward questions about how ideas can become legitimate objects
of political analysis. A number of political theorists have shown how
ideas can only be encountered and analysed when manifested in linguis-
tic forms such as words, phrases, and sentences. For example, Quentin
Skinner draws on the later Wittgenstein to show that ideas expressed
in linguistic terms only acquire meaning within a specific ‘language
game’, and ultimately an entire ‘form of life’. As he puts it, ‘the project
of studying histories of “ideas”, tout court, must rest on a fundamen-
tal philosophical mistake’. Instead, ‘the meaning of an idea must be
its uses to refer in various ways’, and this must take into consideration
‘the nature of all the occasions and activities – the language games –
within which it might appear’ (Skinner, 1988, p. 55). In a similar vein,
as I noted previously, Jacques Derrida shows how the articulation of
ideas always presupposes a system of language consisting of available
260 Poststructuralism and After

and repeatable signs. In this sense, language is not a neutral medium

of signs and symbols, which simply represents ideas and objects, but
a fund of possible meanings that structures the way the world is, thus
enabling us to experience and think about it in certain ways (Derrida,
1976; 1981a).
Put more positively, we need instead to focus on the way in which
various linguistic acts and practices – speeches, statements, slogans,
newspaper headlines and articles, declarations, jokes, questions, and
crucially their constant public repetition or reiteration – are turned
into ideas and ideals. Political ideas and ideals – the ‘privatization’
of state monopolies, the ‘deregulation’ of an industry, or the ‘self-
determination’ of a people – are particular ‘ways of speaking, and of
referring to the words of others, that acquire this general, disembodied
circulation’ (Mitchell, 2011, pp. 68–9). ‘While appearing to be nonma-
terial’, as Timothy Mitchell puts it in the brilliant analyses he presents
in his Carbon Democracy,

with the incorporeal form we attribute ideals or principles, terms

like self-determination and democracy acquire their lightness and
transportability through specific practices. To understand their effec-
tiveness we need to follow the work done to strip such terms of the
varied circumstances that produce them, to translate and mistrans-
late multiple claims into a common idiom, and to build the acoustic
machinery of their circulation.
(Mitchell, 2011, p. 9)

Seen in this light, stripped of their metaphysical aura, the analysis

of ideas requires a careful genealogy of their emergence, descent, and
transformation in multiple contexts and settings. Dissolving false con-
tinuities, problematizing sharp breaks, exposing ignoble origins, and
tracking unlikely misappropriations, becomes the stuff of ideational
analysis. For example, as I have shown in my analysis of an impor-
tant aspect of resistance politics in South Africa during the 1960s and
1970s, the notion of ‘blackness’ in the Black Consciousness Movement
was borrowed from discourses of Black Power in the United States,
and then reworked and transformed into a term that connoted polit-
ical freedom and national liberation (Howarth, 1997; 2000b). On the
other hand, the notion of ‘self-determination’ had been misappropri-
ated by apartheid ideologues as a means of justifying racial segregation
and cultural oppression. (Ironically, of course, Mitchell shows how the
term itself was first articulated by General Smuts, following the Boer
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 261

rebellions against British imperial rule at the end of the nineteenth

century (Mitchell, 2011).) But this means that we also need to rework
their theoretical status within poststructuralist theory.
That is to say, thirdly, we need to think of these ‘somehow nonma-
terial’ forms as signifiers or contingent elements dispersed in a field
of discursivity. Ideas are thus one kind of element, which along with
others – institutions, agents, things, spaces, and so forth – can be articu-
lated into discursive formations through various practices and logics.
Contingent elements or floating signifiers are those entities that are
available to be articulated to other elements in the construction of a
discourse, whereas ‘empty signifiers’, as Laclau calls them, are those
elements that acquire a partial fixity and thus knit together a field of
meaning and practice (Laclau, 1996; 2005).
How, finally, might this approach enable us to critically explain the
change and stabilization of practices, policies, and regimes? To conclude
this section, I shall propose an approach based on what Jason Glynos
and I have called logics of critical explanation (Glynos and Howarth,
2007; Howarth, 2005). The logics perspective can be contrasted with two
critiques of the law-like model of social science explanation. Whereas
(1) interpretivists advance contextualized self-interpretations as their
basic unit of explanation, whilst (2) critical realists favour the contin-
gent interaction of causal mechanisms, we propose the adoption of
logics to characterize and explain social change and stability. In our
view, interpretivists are too internal to the practices and institutions
they seek to understand, whereas critical realists are too external to the
objects they seek to explain in causal terms.
In general, our notion of logics is designed to capture the point, rules,
and ontological preconditions of a policy, practice, or regime. Such log-
ics are not independent of the specific historical contexts in which they
operate or of the particular ontological framework and empirical cir-
cumstances within which they are rooted. But, as I argued in Chapter 3,
whilst we agree with critical realists and many interpretivists that an
‘ontological turn’ in the social sciences is necessary, our ontology is
built on different premises. Of central importance in this regard is our
commitment to the radical contingency of social objectivity, whether in
the form of structures, agents, or institutions. In other words, our onto-
logical perspective is not just concerned with a detailed listing of the
different sorts of entities in the world – what is in the world – which, of
course, is always relative to particular situations and practices, but it also
raises prior considerations about how entities are in our social worlds and
that they are the way they are, which admits of more general reflection.
262 Poststructuralism and After

Indeed, in terms of social and political analysis, this perspective enables

us to highlight the constructed and political character of social objectivity,
and thus the role of power and politics in explaining their constitution
and transformation, and then to articulate a connected series of con-
cepts and logics that can help us to analyse social relations and processes
(see Glynos and Howarth, 2007; Griggs and Howarth, 2013).

Redistribution versus recognition revisited

Bearing these concepts and distinctions in mind, let us return, finally,

to let us return, finally, to Nancy Fraser’s critique of poststructuralist
accounts of identity politics. It will be recalled that throughout her
discussion, she suggests that it is ‘useful to maintain a working, first-
order distinction between socioeconomic injustices and their remedies,
on the one hand, and cultural injustices and their remedies, on the
other’ (Fraser, 1997a, p. 16). But rather than simply affirming or reject-
ing identity politics, she seeks some form of harmony between the two
perspectives. She thus sets herself the task of ‘developing a critical the-
ory of recognition . . . that . . . defends only those versions of the cultural
politics of difference that can be coherently combined with the social
politics of equality’ (Fraser, 1997a, p. 12). More fully, she argues that gay
and lesbian issues conform best to the model of cultural politics; class,
to that of distributive politics; whilst race and gender fall in between as
‘bivalent’ modes (Fraser, 1997a, p. 19).
However, in light of the foregoing discussion, and the alternative
model I propose, it is far from clear that Fraser’s account goes far
enough. Indeed, there are good reasons to believe that it actually
restricts and hinders our theoretical and strategic horizons. As Connolly
has noted, for example, the richness Fraser detects in race and gender
politics, which then leads her to introduce the idea of a ‘bivalent mode’
of politics, actually problematizes the clear distinctions she wants to
make about other types of political engagement, including those that
are deemed to fit snugly into the cultural and distributive categories
(Connolly, 1999, pp. 47–54). On the one hand, it exposes the binary and
exclusionary character of the way Fraser constructs two chains of equiv-
alence: ‘socioeconomic injustice’, ‘political-economic structure’, and
‘redistribution’, on the one hand, and ‘representation, interpretation,
and communication’, and ‘cultural or symbolic change’ on the other, in
which the latter is relegated to a secondary position vis-à-vis the former.
This opposition fails to acknowledge the complex interweaving of
identity, interests and ideas in accounting for political practices and
 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity 263

mobilizations, and underplays the critical role of interpretation and

symbolic mediation in constructing interests, and in struggling for the
just distribution of resources. In Connolly’s apt words, the

[m]obilization of energies for the reduction of income inequality,

for instance, involves a whole series of changes in patterns of self-
interpretation now deeply entrenched in the culture: the state as the
primary site of ineptness and source of dislocations in the corporate
economy; the market as a vehicle of rationality and freedom that
must not be tampered with to promote redistribution; the primacy of
individual responsibility for unemployment and welfare dependence;
the displacement of Keynesianism by Friedmanite manipulation of
the monetary system; and so on. To reduce economic inequality not
only requires macropolitical action at the level of the state and inter-
state system; such macropolitical action requires extensive seeding
and support by micropolitical engagements on a number of fronts.
As one acknowledges how significantly cultural self-interpretation
helps to constitute macro-institutional practices and priorities, one,
first, restrains the tendency to place macropolitics on the side of
distribution and micropolitics on the side of recognition, and, sec-
ond, sets the stage to scramble further the analytical divide Fraser
constructs between distribution and recognition.
(Connolly, 1999, p. 50)

Redistributive struggles, just like struggles for recognition, require just

as much political articulation and discursive construction as any other
forms of politics.
At the same time, if one turns to the so-called politics of recogni-
tion, one finds that the constitution, deconstruction, politicization, and
reworking of identities is itself a material practice, which involves the
construction and mobilization of interests and ideas. Indeed, Fraser’s
model fails to acknowledge the way in which the construction of
oppositional identities, such as sexual minorities, which have been sys-
tematically excluded or discriminated against, if successful, do in fact
bring with them ‘material’ consequences as powerful organizations and
institutions have to change their sedimented practices and provide
resources to meet just demands. Finally, as Connolly also points out,
Fraser’s ‘reduction of recognition to the symbolic underplays both the
dense materiality of culture and its constitutive role in institutional
life’, in which shifts in identity, orientation, and self require material
inscription in bodies, institutions, and ways of life.
264 Poststructuralism and After

Conclusion

This chapter has sought to rebuff a number of deficits that are alleged to
problematize poststructuralist conceptions of identity and subjectivity.
In so doing, it has sought to re-articulate the basic concepts of iden-
tity, identification, ideas, and political subjectivity, in which the idea of
contingency and structural incompletion, which is evident in various
dislocatory experiences, is foregrounded. The chapter has also endeav-
oured to show how these basic concepts, and their logical connection,
can inform our understanding of the relationship between identity and
interests. Although these notions are either separated in much contem-
porary social theory, or one of the two terms is reduced to the other,
I have argued that these are misleading conceptualizations. Instead
I have developed a model that seeks to articulate these concepts in a
coherent fashion, which can be applied to empirical cases. In particular,
I have indicated the way in which such thinking might lead to a recon-
sideration of debates that have pitted a politics of recognition against a
politics of redistribution.
Conclusion

Since I was approached to write Poststructuralism and After, sometime

towards the end of the last century, there has been a growing feeling that
the position of ‘Theory’ (usually spelt with a capital ‘T’) in the human-
ities and social sciences – and poststructuralism or postmodernism is
widely regarded as the epitome of ‘high theory’ – has undergone a sig-
nificant change for the worse. Some have alleged that the project of
a critical social theory has run out of steam, and that its oppositional
potentials have been ‘exhausted’ (Bové, 1992; Latour, 2004, pp. 225–48).
Others have deplored the commodification and reification of ‘high’ or
‘cultural theory’, and its progressive separation from critical practices,
philosophical reflection, and empirical research (e.g., Osborne, 2007,
pp. 19–20). Still others have sought to redefine the role of theory, so that
it no longer constitutes a ‘distinctive object’ but provides the basis for ‘a
new sophistication in the analysis of the concrete’ (Laclau, 1999, p. vii).
The upshot of these developments is much talk about the ‘end of theory’
in the humanities and social sciences, which is evident in expressions
like ‘after theory’ or ‘post-theory’ to characterize our contemporary situ-
ation (Eagleton, 2003). On the other hand, more optimistic voices speak
about the need to move towards a ‘post-theoretical’ universe, in which
theory continues to reinvent itself in new circumstances and conditions
(McQuillan et al., 1999; Simons, 2010a, pp. 8–12).
Of course, most mainstream social scientists are less restrained in
their appraisal of ‘grand theorizing’ in contemporary social and polit-
ical theory, whether this is reflected in the different varieties of
poststructuralism or postmodernism, Habermas’s version of critical the-
ory, John Rawls’s comprehensive account of ‘justice as fairness’, or
Giddens’s theory of structuration (Giddens, 1984: Habermas, 1984;
1987; Rawls, 1971; Skinner, 1990). For them, the practices associated
with grand or high theory are at best exercises in abstract sociological

265
266 Poststructuralism and After

speculation, which are not rooted in careful empirical observation and

rigorous theoretical reasoning, or at worst they are little more than
utopian fantasies that reflect the ideological orientations of the theo-
rists themselves. Indeed, under the growing hegemony of mainstream
social science, it is often assumed that the social sciences face a stark
and unavoidable choice between an increasingly hegemonic form of
empiricism or positivism, which is often obsessed with the use of sophis-
ticated techniques of quantitative research, and the recourse to various
sorts of high or grand theory that are more and more detached from
the empirical realities or concrete social phenomena they purport to
explain or evaluate. But do we have to accept the forced choice that the
growing orthodoxy dictates? Must social theory exclude the pursuit of
empirical research that is theoretically and philosophically informed?
Do social theorists have to posit and accept sharp distinctions between
the search for intelligibility and explanation; explanation and critique;
critical explanation and normative evaluation?
Along with other poststructuralists, my answer to these questions is
a resounding ‘No’. Like proponents of critical realism, critical theory,
Marxism, or structuration theory, I choose instead to combine an inter-
est in grand theory, which necessarily includes the elaboration of a
social ontology, as well as the clarification of those concepts and log-
ics that it makes possible, with efforts to conduct detailed empirical
research on particular aspects of social reality. This involves the artic-
ulation of middle range theories that can bridge the gap between the
ontological categories of poststructuralist theory and the problematized
ontical phenomena that social theorists seek to elucidate. Any social
theory worth its salt must therefore connect ontological, epistemologi-
cal, methodological, and empirical elements in a particular theoretical
synthesis. This in turn often involves the articulation of concepts and
logics from other theoretical traditions and approaches, as long as these
articulations are not eclectic or subsumptive in nature.
Poststructuralism and After has pursued this general goal by exploring
the emergence, evolution, and character of poststructuralist theorizing
in the social sciences. In focussing on the way poststructuralists interro-
gate many of our taken-for-granted assumptions about the social world,
I have shown how they widen the horizons of theoretical and empirical
inquiry by constructing new problems and questions about key issues.
I have also examined their efforts to articulate new concepts and logics
that can critically explain problematized social phenomena. But as its
title suggests the book has also endeavoured to extend poststructuralist
ideas beyond their initial expressions, so that we may grapple with
 Conclusion 267

pressing practical and theoretical issues in the present. This means that
my goal has not been to produce a nostalgic retrospective of a once-
vibrant mode of thinking, nor are its aims limited to the presentation of
an interim report that compliments a past set of achievements, whilst
listing a series of ‘can do betters’. Instead it is better conceived as an exer-
cise in doing social and political theory from a poststructuralist point of
view. It is only in this way that the practice of poststructuralist theo-
rizing, as well as its contribution to scientific research, can be properly
illuminated.
In characterizing the poststructuralist tradition, I have argued that
its proponents accept a common set of ontological, epistemological,
and methodological assumptions and postulates. More concretely, at the
ontological level, they endorse the radical contingency and historicity
of all identities and social structures. At what we might call the epis-
temological level, they acknowledge the contestability of their beliefs
and representations, though I have stressed that this need not entail a
vicious form of epistemic and moral relativism. Finally, they embrace
a pluralistic set of methodological techniques and research strategies
in their efforts to critically explain problematized social phenomena.
Expressed in these terms, I understand poststructuralist thinking to be
a practice of reading, interpreting, criticizing, and evaluating. It is thus a
particular way of doing philosophy and social theory that generates and
explores new possibilities (e.g., Hacking, 1985). This style of theorizing is
animated by an engaged ethos: it is not just concerned with ontological,
epistemological, or methodological issues, but is also critical, involved,
and embodied.
In part, this orientation reflects its origins in the so-called continen-
tal style of philosophy (as opposed to the Anglo-American or analytical
tradition), which emphasizes a consideration of issues thrown up by par-
ticular authors in specific contexts, rather than with a perennial set of
purely philosophical problems (Critchley, 1999). Philosophy and philo-
sophically inspired theory for poststructuralists is thus sometimes a kind
of ‘creative non-fiction’, although its protagonists stress a strong fidelity
to the texts or authors they read or deconstruct, as well as the con-
crete problems they address. Deleuze nicely captures this spirit when
he affirms that ‘To think is to create – there is no other creation – but
to create is first of all to engender “thinking” in thought’ (Deleuze,
1994, p. 147). In short, poststructuralists resist totalizing theory that too
quickly solves problems or posits conclusions in the name of ‘slow’ or
‘slower’ theory, which is always historical, interpretive, contextual, and
ultimately precarious and provisional.
268 Poststructuralism and After

Paradoxically, perhaps, poststructuralists thus share certain affini-

ties with the idealist (and conservative) political philosopher Michael
Oakeshott, when he conceives of theorizing as the ‘adventure of one
who seeks to understand in other terms what he already understands
and in which the understanding sought (itself unavoidably conditional)
is a disclosure of the conditions of understanding enjoyed and not a
substitute for it’ (Oakeshott, 1975, p. vii). Philosophical and theoreti-
cal reflection is in this sense ‘a well-considered intellectual adventure
recollected in tranquillity’ (Oakeshott, 1975, p. vii). Of course, whilst
most poststructuralists would disagree with many (though not all) of
Oakeshott’s substantive and normative commitments – and their work
often has a more critical and engaged edge – they would accept his
idea of theorizing as an open-ended and patient intellectual adven-
ture. As Deleuze insists, creative thinking is a kind of apprenticeship
or learning, as opposed to a practice of recognition, in which the mind
is provoked by an encounter with the unknown or the unfamiliar; it
is thus driven by puzzlement and the perception of a problem (Patton,
2000, p. 20).
Admittedly, in pursuing this project, I have adopted a capacious
conception of poststructuralism, which embraces theorists and critics
who might not identify themselves principally (or even secondar-
ily) as poststructuralists. Yet this characterization does exclude cer-
tain positions and programmes, whose philosophical postulates differ
substantively from those outlined. On these grounds, for example,
poststructuralism is not synonymous with the postmodernist perspec-
tives put forward by theorists like Jean Baudrillard and Jean-Francois
Lyotard, nor is it compatible with critical realism and certain forms of
Marxism on ontological grounds. On the other hand, this does not pre-
clude an engagement with other perspectives. On the contrary, it means
that in their efforts to develop critical explanations poststructuralists
should also strive to converse with other research programmes, such as
structuration theory, critical realism, various forms of Marxism and post-
Marxism, critical theory, ethnomethodology, and so on. So a further
goal of this book has been to bring the poststructuralist tradition – or
‘existential faith’ to use Connolly’s neat phrase – into conversation with
rival and adjacent traditions of thought (Connolly, 2004a; 2008). This
requires, first, that the basic contours of the approach, and its various
incursions into social and political theory, are articulated and exhibited;
secondly, that these basic assumptions and their allied theoretical moves
are brought into dialogue with other traditions, where the task is to dis-
cern and evaluate points of concord and discord; and thirdly, that efforts
 Conclusion 269

are made, where possible, to articulate new possibilities both amongst

divergent traditions or faiths where there are points of convergence and
agreement, and within the various currents of poststructuralism itself.
The overall aim is thus to develop a pluralist, yet non-eclectic, set of
concepts and logics with which to critically explain the social world.

Basic arguments and conclusions

Conceived as a style of thinking, which arises from a contestable

set of philosophical assumptions, I have thus sought to elaborate a
poststructuralist approach to social theory that consists of a loose
grammar of concepts and logics that can inform the exploration of prob-
lematized empirical phenomena. This style of thinking is informed by
an ethos that is engaged, explanatory, critical, and evaluative, whilst
being supported by a credible set of research strategies and methods.
My approach is further constrained by its commitment to seek to
address particular problems faced by lay actors and researchers alike,
where the latter set limits upon and shape what can count as a legit-
imate answer. But does this mean that, to use Wittgenstein’s thoughts
and words, this approach ‘simply puts everything before us, and neither
explains nor deduces anything’? Does it mean that were ‘one to advance
theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to debate them, because
everyone would agree to them’? (Wittgenstein, 1967, Remarks 26, 128).1
Whilst there is some merit in the later Wittgenstein’s turn to ordinary
language and the priority of our everyday linguistic practices for under-
standing and interpreting the world, my answers to these questions are
also negative, for the book has put forward a number of substantive
theses and claims. And though it would go too far to suggest that they
comprise a new set of ‘rules of sociological method’, to use Giddens’s
ironic phrase, they do provide a kind of summary statement of the
arguments developed in the book (Giddens, 1977, p. 167). To begin,
as I have suggested, these theses are rooted in a specific ontological per-
spective that foregrounds the radical contingency and historicity of beings.
What is more, rather than prioritizing a philosophy of immanence or
transcendence, and their attendant ontologies of abundance and lack,
I have sought to show how these two dimensions are mutually related
and implicated. The intertwining of these two dimensions results in the
affirmation of a radical materialism, which postulates that our discursive
forms can never exhaust the materiality of objects. Objects are thus
constituted and appear in various ways in different contexts, depend-
ing on the forces and practices of situated agents, though no concept
270 Poststructuralism and After

or form totally distils their essence. Instead, all forms are vulnerable to
an outside that both marks and deforms them, thus disclosing multiple
potentialities. Objective capacities and the dispositions of human agents
are also characterized by such potentialities, which are never complete
or fixed.
These ontological presuppositions, which I have gleaned from my
readings of Husserl, Heidegger, Lacan, Foucault, Derrida, Laclau and
Žižek, have important consequences for our conceptualization and
understanding of social structures, agency, and subjectivity. Drawing
on classical structuralists such as Saussure, Hjelmslev, and Levi-Strauss,
I have argued that structures are composed of systems of related ele-
ments, in which the identities of the latter depend on their differences
from others within the system. Structures in this sense are symbolic
orders, which are both virtual and actual. The virtual aspect of social
structures resides in the fact that certain ‘absent’ differences are always
presupposed in the actualization of any particular structure. For exam-
ple, when subjects speak their natural languages by uttering words and
sentences in various communicative practices, then they presuppose the
differences that constitute the ‘treasure house’ of language, even though
they do not actually use those absent signifiers. But social structures are
also real in that any particular actualization results in the production,
reproduction, or transformation of particular relations and practices;
these practices and relations exist because they are embodied in cer-
tain institutions and performed by subjects and agents. The practice of
playing a game of chess presupposes a set of rules and pieces with cer-
tain powers and properties, which are known and acknowledged by the
players, even though those rules, properties, and understandings are for
the most part pushed into the background in the actual playing of the
game. These considerations hold for all social institutions and practices,
though their specific character must be fleshed out in each instance.
But following interventions by theorists like Deleuze, Derrida,
Foucault, Lacan, and others, the poststructuralist twist to this account
focusses on the identity and limits of any particular system or symbolic
order. As they have put it in various ways, any structure or system of dif-
ferences is defined by reference to something that is actively excluded
from that system, thus establishing the limits of a particular structure.
Derrida captures this paradoxical conception of structure with his log-
ics of différance and iterability, whilst Deleuzian perspectives emphasize
a pure logic of difference, which is rooted in Nietzsche’s difference
between being and becoming. But this means that social structures are
thus incomplete entities that fail to exhaust the virtual set of differences
 Conclusion 271

that form the fields within which they are formed. Saying that sym-
bolic orders are incomplete does not mean that they are simply missing
something, as when we say that we have not ticked all the boxes on a
bureaucratic form. Instead, incompletion highlights an absence or neg-
ativity that structurally prevents the completion of a discourse, thereby
indicating its limits. Structures are thus incomplete systems of mean-
ingful practice, because they are predicated on the exclusion of certain
elements, though these excluded elements are required for the very
identity of the discourse. In Laclau’s terms, this absence or negativity
thus prevents the full constitution of a discursive structure, so that every
structure is thus dislocated. This ‘out of joint-ness’ is evident in par-
ticular dislocations or events that show their incompletion, whilst the
construction of social antagonisms signify the limits of any discourse or
social order, that is, its contestation by competing political forces.
These ontological assumptions provide a general horizon for under-
standing and explaining various aspects of social life. But further work
is required to make them applicable for social and political analysis.
A first question concerns the way social actors respond to the crises and
dislocations of social life. Do their experiences of radical contingency
lead them to forge political demands and claims? Do these demands
get hooked together to form wider projects or coalitions that can bring
about social change at different levels? Or are they incorporated into
existing systems of power, deflected to the margins of society, or sim-
ply repressed? What is more, these questions prompt further queries
about the precise role of power, domination, and ideology within this
approach.
In exploring these issues in the book, building upon Laclau and
Mouffe, I have stressed the constitutive role of the concept of antago-
nism in grappling with this issue. It is the construction of antagonisms –
in which the presence of an ‘Other’ blocks the identity and interests
of a subject – that provides us with a way of disclosing the limits of a
practice or regime of practices. What is more, as I have suggested, the
construction of social antagonisms presupposes the experience of crisis
and disruption – the disclosure of the incompleteness of the structures
that partially form us – whilst they also require the availability of credi-
ble discursive resources with which to constitute the antagonist as other.
Power, ideology, and domination prevent these grievances from arising
by rendering them invisible or manageable within existing systems of
power.
The ontological assumptions also make possible an anti-essentialist
account of political identities. Political identities are not given or
272 Poststructuralism and After

primordial entities, but social fabrications that are constituted by

political practices of inclusion and exclusion. Constructing an identity
is thus also an act of power, for it excludes other possibilities and forms
of the self. Political identities are thus fragile, multiple, and incomplete,
and they emerge through processes of identification. But this brings us
finally to the question of the subject. The dialectics of identity and
identification give rise to a particular understanding of subjectivity and
agency. More fully, I have distinguished between subject positions within
a discourse – places of enunciation that subjects can occupy in speaking
and acting, for instance – and a more radical notion of political subjec-
tivity in which subjects act or decide. The latter arises when social agents
identify with new objects or discourses. The condition of possibility
for the latter form of subjectivity is the dislocation of sedimented social
structures, and the idea of a ‘divided subject’ that is divided between its
identity and the ever-present threat of its dissolution or negation when
structures are disrupted.
What is more, I have argued that we need to develop a more complex
way of thinking about the logics of taking a decision itself. In this regard,
poststructuralists like Laclau tend to equate decision-making, the emer-
gence of political agents, and the creation of new social orders. However,
this collapses the categorical distinction between decisions taken within
a structure and decisions taken about a structure, which are best concep-
tualized as two ideal-typical types of agency that constitute a continuum
of possible forms, so that actual acts can be positioned and characterized
according to the degrees to which they produce structural change. For
example, it is evident that consumers, politicians, bureaucrats, activists,
sports players, pedestrians and motorists operating in different insti-
tutional settings are continuously taking decisions without necessarily
questioning or creating new structural contexts in which these choices
are made. But in severely dislocated conjunctures (such as revolution-
ary situations or organic crises) collective political subjects may clearly
‘take decisions’ about the creation and formation of new social struc-
tures. Intermediary forms can be located between these two regulative
possibilities. Instead of a universal model of radical political agency, we
need therefore to be attentive to the precise historical and social cir-
cumstances in which various types of agency emerge and function. The
yardstick for guiding empirical analysis thus revolves around the sorts of
decision that are made, as well as the contexts in which they are taken.
This dialectic between identity and identification is important because
it opens the prospect of choice and freedom – and thus the exercise
of power – for the subject. Hence it offers a novel perspective on the
 Conclusion 273

problem of ‘structure-agency’. First, it problematizes essentialist concep-

tions that privilege the determining role of either structure or agency.
But it also contests dualistic conceptions which are predicated on an
external relationship between structures and agents. Instead, it begins
with a ‘thrown’ subject – a subject that is nothing but the practices and
identities conferred by its culture or ‘world’ – where the split between
subject and structure is covered over. However, if both the structure
and subject are marked by a fundamental foreclosure – an impossibility
which becomes evident in moments of disruption – then in certain con-
ditions the subject is able to act in a strong sense: to identify with new
objects and ideologies. This moment of identification is the moment of
the radical subject, which discloses the subject as an agent in its world.
As Foucault suggests, it is the contingency of things that opens a space
for critique and evaluation.
It is evident from these considerations that the role of power, domi-
nation, and ideology are important elements of the approach advocated
in Poststructuralism and After. There are those who argue that we don’t
need more theorizing about the concepts of power and critique. As Ian
Shapiro puts it in his reading of Steven Lukes’s recently reworked ‘radical
view’ of power, ‘whether and to what extent any or all of the differ-
ent faces of power operate in a given setting are subjects for empirical
research, not armchair reflection’ (Shapiro, 2006, p. 146). Up to a point,
Shapiro is justified in claiming that the most interesting questions about
power are best thought of as empirical, and he is not entirely wrong to
suggest that normative questions are now best thought of as matters
of institutional design, though this is a rather narrow remit. Nonethe-
less, there is still I think room for conceptual clarification and theory
construction in the field of power studies, especially with respect to
our understanding of power as domination, which includes the latter’s
subjective and affective grip, as well as its connection to the concepts
of discourse, subjectivity, and critique. Further theoretical reflection is
also required to conceptualize the methodological requirements for a
meaningful empirical investigation of the exercise and sedimentation
of power. Finally, there is still work to be done in connecting explana-
tions of power in different contexts to the critique of domination and
our elaboration of alternative normative ideals.
In his Tractatus Politicus, Spinoza distinguishes between power as
potentia, and power as potestas. Potentia signifies the power of things in
nature, including human beings, to ‘exist and act’, whereas potestas is
employed when talking about being in the power of another (Spinoza,
1958, p. 273, cited in Lukes, 2005, p. 73). Following Morriss and Lukes,
274 Poststructuralism and After

I accept that the general concept of power is a dispositional concept,

which includes within its scope a wide range of objects and processes,
human and non-human (Lukes, 2005; Morriss, 2002). Things thus have
causal powers and properties that can be actualized in certain situations.
Yet in exploring power and domination from a poststructuralist perspec-
tive, I have focussed on problems arising from the second element of
Spinoza’s definition – ‘power over’ – which in my view has a distinctive
application for the critical explanation of political practices and social
relations, even though analyses of the latter require a consideration of
sundry physical and non-human processes and powers.
More fully, I argue that an important aspect of power consists of radi-
cal acts of institution, which involve the elaboration of political frontiers
and the drawing of lines of inclusion and exclusion. Here the exercise of
power constitutes and produces practices and social relations. But power is
also involved in the sedimentation and reproduction of social relations
via the mobilization of various techniques of political management and
through the elaboration of ideologies and fantasies. The function of the
latter is to conceal the radical contingency of social relations and to
naturalize relations of domination. Power is thus intimately related to
domination, though the latter is not reducible to the former, and the
precise connection between power and domination must be carefully
conceptualized.
Central to the development of this argument is a particular con-
ception of hegemony, which emerges out of the Marxist tradition of
social and political theory. Some theorists and commentators continue
to raise important questions about the importance and usefulness of
this concept for contemporary social and political analysis. Others
have endorsed the concept of hegemony, but strongly criticized the
way in which post-Marxists and poststructuralists have developed the
notion. Instead, they have sought to connect the notion of hegemony
to the philosophy of critical realism (e.g., Davies, 2011; Joseph, 2002a;
2006).
By contrast, I have argued that a poststructuralist conception of
hegemony is crucial for our understanding of power, domination, and
ideology. In so doing, I stressed two connected aspects of hegemony.
On the one hand, hegemony is a kind of political practice that captures
the making and breaking of political projects and discourse coalitions.
But, on the other hand, it is also a form of rule or governance that
speaks to the maintenance of the policies, practices, and regimes that
are formed by such forces. This second aspect of hegemony concerns
the various ways in which regimes, policies, or practices grip or hold
 Conclusion 275

a subject fast, or fail to do so. It concerns the affective dimension of

politics. In short, therefore, I have argued that power is an ontolog-
ical feature of social practices and relations, partly because all social
forms are the result of political struggles and decisions. Moreover, this
axiom applies equally to the complex practices of policymaking and
policy implementation, as power and hegemony can inform the crit-
ical explanation and evaluation of policy. Social and political change
is often connected to the struggle between opposed forces, whilst poli-
cies are often stabilized and maintained by the construction of fantasies
and ideologies that secure the consent of subjects, as well as complex
political techniques and tactics.
The endeavour to rethink the concepts of power, domination,
ideology and hegemony are in my view intimately connected to
an understanding of identity and subjectivity. Set against the back-
ground of a number of critiques of postmodernism and post-Marxism,
Poststructuralism and After elaborates a more complicated and defensi-
ble account of identity/difference and subjectivity in poststructuralist
theory, which can be both explanatory and critical. More fully,
I have argued that rather than favouring either identity or difference,
poststructuralists stress the contingent, constructed, and relational char-
acter of identity/difference, which in turn exposes productive political
and ethical paradoxes and dilemmas. I also claim that an emphasis on
identity need not necessarily exhaust the problem of the subject and
subjectivity, which cannot and should not be reduced to questions of
identity alone. Although identity and subjectivity are intimately con-
nected, they are not the same phenomena and do not pose exactly
the same problems. Instead, by arguing for a shift from identity to
identification, I emphasize the way in which poststructuralists break
with deterministic and structuralist accounts of human agency and
make room for a stronger notion of political subjectivity. Finally, I have
claimed that the concepts of interest and identity, and their connec-
tion to the role of ideas, ought not to be separated into analytically and
ontologically distinct paradigms, but are best conceptualized together,
so that the fashionable oppositions between recognition and redis-
tribution, culture and materiality, subjectivity and objectivity can be
deconstructed and reinscribed.
In this conclusion, I have set out some new avenues for future
theoretical and empirical investigation, whilst putting forward a num-
ber of concepts and logics that arise from my deconstructive readings
of various structuralist and poststructuralist theorists and their respec-
tive theories. But the next, even more pressing and difficult task, is to
276 Poststructuralism and After

continue to apply this conceptual grammar, and its particular ethos of

research, to newly constructed problems in various historical and social
contexts, for ultimately it is only in this endeavour to make a practi-
cal difference to our understanding and explanation of concrete social
phenomena that the value and significance of such concepts can be
justified.
Notes

Introduction
1. In his Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, Louis Hjelmslev, who was a leading
figure in the Copenhagen School of linguistics, also affirms the central role
of form, which is purged of all phonic and semantic substance. But he resists
both the temptation to distinguish within and between signifier and signi-
fied, and the idea that the sign is the fundamental linguistic unit. Instead, he
decomposes the sign into more basic units, which he names glossemes. In this
model, the signifier is broken down into phonemes and the signified into semes.
For example, the sign ‘calf’ comprises three phonemes – /k/, /ae/, and /f/,
whilst the signified/concept contains at least three semantic elements – what
he terms semes – /bovine/, /male/, and /young/. The upshot of this interven-
tion is the claim that there is no one to one correspondence between signifiers
and signifieds, and thus no isomorphic relation. Indeed, it is nicely captured
by the words of Oswald Ducrot and Tzvetan Todorov, when they note that in
Hjelmslev’s account ‘it is now clear that the phonic and semantic units can
be distinguished from the formal point of view: the combinatorial laws con-
cerning the phonemes of a language and those applying to the semes cannot
be shown to correspond to each other’ (Ducrot and Todorov, 1979, p. 22, see
Torfing, 1999, pp. 88–90).
2. The set of thinkers and researchers who in my understanding qualify
as second-generation poststructuralists is large, and I make no claims to
be exhaustive. Nonetheless, it includes theorists such as Richard Ashley,
Jane Bennett, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, David Campbell, Terrell Carver,
Rom Coles, Bill Connolly, Joan Copjec, Simon Critchley, James der Derian,
Michael Dillon, Thomas Dumm, Kathy Ferguson, Diana Fuss, Jim George,
Herbert Gottweis, Bonnie Honig, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Paul Patton,
Michael Hardt, Rob Walker, Michael Shapiro, Iris Marion Young, James Tully,
Hugh Willmott, Linda Zerilli, and Slavoj Žižek, to name but a few.
3. This list is even larger, and continues to grow. It includes theorists such
as Benjamin Arditi, Mercedes Barros, Sebastian Barros, Steve Bastow, Peter
Bloom, Joanildo Burity, Nico Carpentier, Anthony Clohesy, Martin Coward,
Sam Dallyn, Glynn Daly, Mark Devenney, Torben Dyrberg, Jenny Edkins, Alan
Finlayson, Jason Glynos, Steven Griggs, Alejandro Groppo, Maarten Hajer,
Juan-Pablo Lichtmeyer, Oliver Marchart, Kate Nash, Saul Newman, Aletta
Norval, Davide Panagia, Matthew Paterson, Veronique Pin-Fat, Kam Shapiro,
Jon Simons, Anna Marie Smith, Yannis Stavrakakis, Jacob Torfing, Simon
Tormey, Moya Lloyd, James Martin, Kate Nash, Lasse Thomassen, Lars Tønder,
Jeremy Valentine, Mark Wenman, Nathan Widder, and many more besides.
Each has, in my view, extended the concepts and logics of poststructuralism
into the realm of social and political theory.

277
278 Notes

4. In particular, a growing number of political analysts have used poststructuralist

concepts and methods to explore the construction of popular and collective
identities in various contexts (Harvey, 1998; Howarth, 1997; 2000b; Norval,
1994a; 1994b; 1996; 2000b). They have also explored the role of groups and
social movements in mobilizing and shaping political outcomes, and they
have sought to delineate different types of ideological and rhetorical forms in
the construction of political arguments (Brown, 1995; Finlayson, 2004c; 2007;
Griggs and Howarth, 2002; 2004; 2007; Finlayson and Martin, 2008; Norval,
2000a; 2007).
Other sociologists and political scientists have used poststructuralist con-
cepts and methods to examine the changing forms of network governance in
contemporary societies, as well as their impact on democracy and their poten-
tial for greater democratization (Bevir, 2006; Sorensen and Torfing, 2006;
Marcussen and Torfing, 2007). Sociologists and policy theorists in this emer-
gent tradition have also conducted various forms of policy analysis, which
include studies on international and foreign policy, social policy, and different
struggles and interventions in particular policy domains such as the environ-
ment, transport, and aviation expansion. A significant group of theorists have
drawn on Michel Foucault’s later work on governmentality to rethink the role
of government and freedom in our contemporary world (Dean, 1999; Rose,
1999). The work of Foucault and other poststructuralists has been employed
in the field of criminology (Carrabine, 2004). Such studies complement the
vast corpus of texts of poststructuralist theory and methods in the fields of
gender, sexuality, and race (Butler, 1990; 1993; Carver, 1996; Gilroy, 1987;
Hall, 1986; Nash, 1998; Scott, 1988; 2005; 2007; Smith, 1994a; 1994b; Zerilli,
2005). These include studies of masculinity, the role of men in political the-
ory, as well as their connections to advertising, consumption, and the body
in contemporary society and politics (Chambers and Carver, 2008a; Nixon,
1996; Weeks, 1989).
Within the domain of normative and critical theory, poststructuralists
have criticized aggregative and deliberative models of democracy, whilst elab-
orating alternative forms of radical democracy, which are based on ideas of
agonism, deep pluralism, or the primacy of popular struggles (Coles, 1992;
1997; 2005; Connolly, 1995; Mouffe, 1993; 2000a; 2005; Norval, 2007; Owen,
1994; Schaap, 2009; Tully, 1995; Wenman, 2003a; 2003b). Many have taken
up the political burden placed on the analysis of language to prove its value in
the real world by calling upon the key texts of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Foucault,
and Derrida (Chambers, 2003). A number of recent studies have also explored
the ways in which thinkers like Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Lyotard,
and Kristeva have directly impacted on the development of political theory
(Patton, 2000; Simons, 1995; Stavrakakis, 1999; Williams, 2000). Others have
explored the innovative contributions of poststructuralists like Judith Butler,
William Connolly, Iris Marion Young, Ernesto Laclau, and Chantal Mouffe on
contemporary political theory (Chambers and Carver, 2008a; Smith, 1994).
A further group of theorists have explored debates between leading post-
structrualists like Derrida and Foucault and the critical theory of Habermas
(Devenney, 2004; Thomassen, 2008).
In debates pertaining to the history of social and political thought,
Terrell Carver has used poststructuralist themes to rethink the work of
 Notes 279

Marx and Engels, whilst Quentin Skinner and James Tully have also drawn
upon poststructuralist motifs to provide novel interpretations of key political
philosophers (Carver, 1999; Skinner, 1996; Tully, 1989; 1999; 2002). Debates
about theorists like Carl Schmitt have been reanimated by poststructuralists
who have positioned themselves for and against this controversial thinker
(Mouffe, 1999; Shapiro, 2010). Scholars like Wendy Brown and Lars Tonder
have reworked traditional concepts like tolerance and human rights from a
poststructuralist perspective, whilst James Tully has transformed our under-
standings of constitutionalism and multiculturalism (Brown, 2006). Other
poststructuralists have intervened in the fields of transitional justice, as well
as the politics of truth and reconciliation (Schaap, 2005). Torben Dyrberg has
articulated a poststructuralist picture of power, and others have explored the
contribution of poststructrualists like Derrida, Foucault, Laclau, and Mouffe in
the context of postfoundational thinking more generally (Marchart, 2007a).
Theorists and philosophers with the poststructuralist style have also sought
to deconstruct and rework the philosophy of materialism (Bennett, 2010
Coole and Frost, 2010; Latour, 2005). In the fields of education and health,
proponents of the poststructuralist paradigm have also worked to decon-
struct mainstream approaches and to disclose new ways of constructing
and resolving problems in their respective fields (e.g., Peters, 2001; Trifonas
and Peters, 2004). Finally, a particularly vibrant set of interventions from a
poststructuralist point of view is evident in the field of international relations,
where an emergent group of scholars have challenged the dominant idealist,
realist, or Marxist paradigms. Scholars like Michael Shapiro, David Campbell,
Mick Dillon, Jenny Edkins, and others have introduced new dimensions and
concerns of analysis – media, spatiality, representation, and the politics of
identity or difference – or have reinvigorated traditional areas of international
relations and international political economy, such as security studies, war,
military interventions, international governance, and foreign policy analy-
sis. In a related area, scholars such as Timothy Mitchell and David Slater
have transformed the field of development studies by drawing on theorists
like Derrida, Foucault, and Heidegger (Escobar, 1995; Mitchell, 1991; 2002a;
Nakano, 2009).

1 The Poststructuralist Project

1. In Davidson’s words:

I conclude that there is no such thing as a language, not if a language is

anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There
is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must
give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language users
acquire and then apply to cases. And we should try again to say how con-
vention in any important sense is involved in language; or, as I think, we
should give up the attempt to illuminate how we communicate by appeal
to conventions.
(Davidson, 1986, p. 446)
280 Notes

Inevitably, Davidson’s full argument has been subject to much discussion (see
Dummett, 1986; Hacking, 1986).
2. In restricting the structuralist project in this way, I also put aside a related tra-
dition of structuralism and structural analysis, which has its roots in modern
mathematics. As Vincent Descombes, Francois Dosse, and others have noted,
this kind of structuralism has its roots in the work of Nicolas Bourbaki and was
taken up by the French philosopher, Michel Serres (Descombes, 1980; Dosse,
1997). (‘Nicolas Bourbaki’ was a collective pseudonym used by a group of
mathematicians, including Henri Cartan, Claude Chevalle, Jean Dieudonné,
André Weil, and Charles Ehresman, who from the mid-1930s worked on a
definitive survey of new mathematical thinking based mainly on set theory.)
In the words of Bourbaki, the notion of mathematical structure can be defined
in the following way:
We can now clarify what is to be understood, in general terms, by a math-
ematical structure. The feature common to various notions ranged under
the generic heading is that they all apply to sets of elements, the nature of
which is not specified; in order to define a structure, one or more relations
involving these elements may be taken ... it may then be postulated that
this or these relations fulfil certain conditions (to be enumerated), which
are the axioms of the structure envisaged. To develop the axiomatic theory
of a given structure is to deduce all the logical consequences of its axioms,
forbidding oneself any other hypothesis concerning the elements under con-
sideration (and especially any hypothesis with regard to their particular
“nature”.
(N. Bourbaki, cited in Descombes, 1980, p. 85)

What is essential to this method is the idea that the content of any object or
phenomenon is conceived as a component of a model or representation, and
not as a thing in itself, which can in turn be related to other contents, which
are similarly arranged in a system of relations. In other words, the content
must be positioned in relations that enable the analyst to characterize a set of
elements, where the relations are defined in a purely formal way by specific
properties, solely by reference to an independently specified structure. The
independently specified structure thus enables comparisons between different
systems of elements by establishing isomorphic relations between them.
As various commentators have noted, Michel Serres is the principal (if only)
modern French philosopher to follow this kind of structuralist methodology
in his many writings on the history of science and the texts of the human-
ities, which he seeks to connect together in a strictly isomorphic fashion
(Descombes, 1980, p. 85; Dosse, 1997, p. 89; Webb, 2012, p. 20).
In my view, Serres’ approach to structural analysis is not unrelated to – or
indeed opposed to – the linguistic model elaborated by Saussure, which I take
as the paradigm of structuralist methodology, even though the latter tended
to stress the notion of a linguistic system rather than a linguistic structure.
Indeed, both the orthodox mathematical and linguistic variations have, in
my view, to be deconstructed and reworked to avoid an essentialism of the
system or the structure, though Serres’ work, of course, performs the same
operation by stressing the radical historicity of related sets and systems (e.g.,
Serres, 1982; 1995).
 Notes 281

Another approach to the overall characterization of the structuralist

paradigm is evident in an early essay by Gilles Deleuze, in which (before his
collaboration with Felix Guattari) he enumerates seven common criteria for a
proper structural analysis. Such criteria include (1) the centrality of the sym-
bolic dimension of social relations, where linguistics plays a dominant role;
(2) the importance of the localization or positioning of elements within a
structure; the stress upon the role of (3) difference and (4) singularity; (5) the
importance of seriality, which introduces dynamism into structures; (6) the
centrality of what he terms ‘the principle of the empty case’, which highlights
the lack inherent in any structure, which in turn causes dynamism and move-
ment; and (7) a movement from the subject to practice, though structuralism
‘is not at all a form of thought that suppresses the subject, but one that breaks
it up and distributes it systematically, that contests the identity of the sub-
ject, that dissipates it and makes it shift from place to place, an always nomad
subject, made of individuations, but impersonal ones, or of singularities, but
pre-individual ones’ (Deleuze, 2004, p. 190).
Again, in my view, Deleuze’s particular understanding of structuralism,
which in itself is highly illuminating and productive, does not contradict my
characterization of the paradigm, though he stresses the logic of sense (which
draws on Émile Benveniste and Henri Bergson), so as to use the resources of
structuralism to criticize transcendence in the name of a radical immanence
that is replete with differences and singularities (Dosse, 2012, p. 133; Widder,
2012, pp. 21–7). But his (and Guattari’s) passage out of what he came to see as
the structuralist impasse was to stress, inter alia, a new machinic conception of
difference and desire, which then unfolded a vast new assemblage of concepts
and logics (e.g., Deleuze and Guattari, 1987).
3. One such expression of the model is found in Condillac, when he asserts that

If men write, it is (1) because they have something to communicate;

(2) because what they have to communicate is their ‘thought,’ their ‘ideas,’
their representations. Representative thought precedes and governs com-
munication which transports the ‘idea,’ the signified content; (3) because
men are already capable of communicating and of communicating their
thought to each other when, in continuous fashion, they invent the means
of communication that is writing.
(Condillac, cited in Derrida, 1982, p. 312)

2 Problematizing Poststructuralism
1. See Sokal (1996; 2008), Sokal and Brichmont (2003).
2. Other notable instances of this are evident in the so-called Derrida Contro-
versy, in which Derrida was refused an honorary doctorate at Cambridge
University, as well as Raymond Tallis’s and Richard Dawkins’s various out-
pourings (e.g., Dawkins, 1998; Tallis, 1995).
3. The latter include theorists and critics such as Daniel Bell (1996, pp. 283–339),
Robert Grant (1990; 2000, p. 86; 2003), Irving Kristol (2011), Mark Lilla
(2001), Stanley Rosen (1990), Roger Scruton (1995, pp. 5–6), and many others.
4. Habermas’s softening attitude to Derrida and Foucault is charted and dis-
cussed by Lasse Thomassen (2006; 2008; 2010).
282 Notes

5. Yet it is worth noting that, in an interesting manoeuvre, Habermas’s main

response to the poststructuralist challenge is not so much to reject the attack
on ‘subject-centred’ reason or ‘the philosophy of the subject’ – the domi-
nation of ‘instrumental reason’ as it is sometimes called – but to show its
one-sidedness in reducing reason and rationality ‘to only one of its dimen-
sions’ (Habermas, 1987, p. 311). And, as against this totalizing rage against
reason, Habermas seeks to liberate and recuperate its rational and emancipa-
tory potentials via his intersubjective project of communicative rationality.
Rejecting the irrational or religious rejection of modernity, Habermas argues
that

a paradigm only loses its force when it is negated in a determinate fash-

ion by a different paradigm, that is, when it is devalued in an insightful
way; it is certainly resistant to any simple invocation of the extinction
of the subject. Even the furious labour of deconstruction has identifiable
consequences only when the paradigm of self-consciousness, of the rela-
tion of self-to-self of a subject knowing and acting in isolation, is replaced
by a different one – by the paradigm of mutual understanding, that is,
of the intersubjective relationship between individuals who are socialized
through communication and reciprocally recognize one another. Only
then does the critique of the domineering thought of subject-centred
reason emerge in a determinate form – namely, as a critique of Western logo-
centrism, which is diagnosed not as an excess but as a deficit in rationality.
Instead of overtrumping modernity, it takes up again the counterdiscourse
inherent in modernity and leads it away from the battle lines between
Hegel and Nietzsche, from which there is no exit. This critique renounces
the high-flown originality of a return to archaic origins; it unleashes the
paradigm of the philosophy of consciousness in the period from Descartes
to Kant.
(Habermas, 1987, p. 310)
In this way, then, the intersubjective character of communicative rational-
ity circumvents the philosophy of consciousness by unleashing ‘the rational
potential of bourgeois culture itself’ (Habermas, 1987, p. 119).
6. Poststructuralists and post-Marxists have made spirited responses to these alle-
gations (e.g., Glynos and Howarth, 2007; Howarth, 2000a; Laclau and Mouffe,
1987; Marchart, 2007a).
7. Building on Jameson’s appraisal of poststructuralist theory, Mark Poster has
endeavoured to mediate between Habermas and the French poststructuralists
such as Foucault (Poster, 1989). He proposes that the poststructuralist position
be developed into a critical theory of the ‘mode of information’, which would
thus constitute a ‘regional theory of new language situations characterized by
electronic mediation’ (Poster, 1989, p. 32; see also Poster, 1990).
8. Connolly’s perspective is more complex than this. He insists that ‘the
political’ in a ‘pluralizing culture’ comprises six dimensions: it

embodies a micropolitics of action by the self on itself and the small-scale

assemblage upon itself, a politics of disturbance through which sedimented
identities are rendered more alert to the deleterious effects of their nat-
uralizations upon difference, a politics of enactment through which new
 Notes 283

possibilities of being are propelled into established constellations, a politics

of representational assemblages through which general policies are processed
through the state, a politics of interstate relations, and a politics of non-
statist, cross-national movements through which external/internal pressure
is placed on corporate and state-centred priorities.
(Connolly, 1995, p. xxi; see also Howarth, 2008; 2010; 2011)

3 Ontological Bearings
1. Hay notes the way political scientists tend to shy away from ontological issues,
leaving these questions to philosophers and social theorists, while focussing
instead on careful and systematic empirical research (Hay, 2006).
2. At other points in the text, however, he explicitly rejects the privileging of
ideas and reverses his understanding of the relationship between language,
meaning, and social practice. For example, in his critique of textbook accounts
of language in the field of social psychology, Winch states that

The impression given is that first there is language (with words hav-
ing a meaning, statements capable of being true or false) and then, this
being given, it comes to enter into human relationships and to be mod-
ified by the particular human relationships into which it does so enter.
What is missed is that those very categories of meaning, etc., are logi-
cally dependent for their sense on social interaction between men . . . There
is no discussion of how the very existence of concepts depends on
group life.
(Winch, 1990, p. 44)

Developing this theme, he argues that ‘[i]t will seem less strange that social
relations should be like logical relations between propositions once it is
seen that logical relations between propositions themselves depend on social
relations between men’ (Winch, 1990, p. 126. Emphasis added). In the latter for-
mulations, ideas, concepts, and statements are related to a more fundamental
set of social relations and social practices, and it is the latter which provide a
critical locus for meaning and linguistic practices.
3. See Benton (1984), Lawson (1996; 2003), Stones (1996), and Wight (2006).
4. Bourdieu’s careful empirical research in the discipline of anthropology is
primarily concerned with an analysis of the reproductive mechanisms and
logics of various social hierarchies. Contesting the theoretical fundamentals
of Marxist analyses, Bourdieu criticizes the primacy of economic structures
and relations, whilst stressing that the ability of social actors to actively
impose and engage their cultural productions and symbolic systems plays
an essential role in the maintenance of different social structures and rela-
tions of domination. What Bourdieu called ‘symbolic violence’ is that form
of domination which, transcending the opposition usually drawn between
sense relations and power relations, communication and domination, is only
exerted through the communication in which it is disguised’ (Bourdieu, 1977,
p. 237). It forms part of an assemblage of legitimizing mechanisms and log-
ics, which are designed to ensure that the contingency and arbitrariness of a
social order is effectively disguised and concealed, and hence reproduced over
284 Notes

time. Put more fully, Bourdieu divides the modern social world into various
fields. For him, the differentiation of social activities leads to the constitu-
tion of various, relatively autonomous, social spaces in which competition
centres around particular types of capital. These fields are treated on a hierar-
chical basis wherein the dynamics of fields arise out of the struggle of social
actors trying to occupy the dominant positions within the field. Although
Bourdieu embraces prime elements of conflict theory like Marx, he diverges
from analyses that situate social struggle only within the fundamental eco-
nomic antagonisms between social classes. The conflicts which take place in
each social field have specific characteristics arising from those fields and that
involve many social relationships which are not economic. In short, by artic-
ulating a theory of social action around the concept of habitus, his approach
seeks to show that social agents develop strategies which are adapted to the
needs of the social worlds that they inhabit. These strategies are unconscious
and act on the level of a bodily logic. They are the product of socialization and
acquired bodily dispositions and thus not reducible to thin theories of ratio-
nality, the determination of economic structures, or the implicit (or explicit)
rules of communication.

4 Deconstructing Structure and Agency

1. It is of course true to say that some theorists are sceptical about the impor-
tance and relevance of the problem (e.g., Fuller, 1998; Wendt, 1997). For
them, the question of structure and agency is more of an invention of grand
social theorists than a real and resoluble issue in social theory or critical
explanation. For others, the problem may exist, but is essentially contested,
so that the best we can do is to display a plurality of incompatible and even
incommensurable frameworks. But even understood in the latter sense, the
issue of structure and agency is of clear importance, for it enables us to com-
pare and clarify the basic ontological assumptions of different theoretical
approaches.
2. Phenomenologists and linguistic philosophers, for example, tend to restrict
agency to intentional subjects, whereas materialists and naturalists tend to
extend the concept of agency to non-subjective entities and objects, such
as food, machines, animals, and so on (e.g., Bennett, 2007; 2010; Bhaskar,
1998).
3. One perennial dispute in this regard concerns the relationship between
‘ontological individualists’ and ‘ontological holists’, which as we shall see
is crystallized in the respective philosophies of J. S. Mill and Karl Marx. For
the former, ‘the ultimate constituents of the social world are individual peo-
ple who act more or less appropriately in the light of their dispositions and
understandings of their situation’, and doubt is often cast on approaches
that suggest that institutions and groups have an existence independently
of individuals (Watkins, cited in Lukes, 1973, p. 179). By contrast, ontolog-
ical holists stress the existence of groups and social institutions that are not
reducible to ‘the decisions, actions, attitudes, etc. of human individuals’, as
Popper suggests (Popper, 1945, p. 98). Here attention is paid to the wider
sets of social relations and practices within which agents find themselves,
 Notes 285

and interpretive and explanatory work is directed at linking human action

to particular contexts.
4. More generally, such epistemological and methodological issues raise crucial
questions about the concepts of power and causality, and their connection
to structure and agency. As various theorists and philosophers have noted,
stretching back at least to Hobbes, questions of power and causality are
intimately related to the problem of structure and agency. Can we talk mean-
ingfully about ‘structural power’, or does this notion preclude the concept
of agency in the sense of ‘agents acting otherwise’? If we can, how are we
to characterize and ‘measure’ the impact of ‘external’ structural constraints
on the activities and identities of social agents? Or does power depend upon
an idea of agency that is not fully determined by structures? At the same
time, the structure-agency problem raises important questions about causal-
ity. Is causality internally connected to agency, and to efficient or linear
conceptions of causality? Or is there a place for conceptions of structural
or immanent causality? How and in what ways is causality connected to the
issue of subjectivity? Later chapters deal with these fundamental questions.
5. Initially spearheaded by Louis Althusser’s novel interpretation of Marx’s
concept of dialectics, this approach challenged the humanist version of
Marxism elaborated by thinkers like Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Erich Fromm,
Lucien Goldman, as well as the Praxis School in Yugoslavia in the 1960s,
which stressed the role of autonomous human actors in both shaping
history and in providing the ethical basis of an emancipated socialist
future. The Althusserian project also contested the more deterministic and
monocausal accounts of history propounded by classical and orthodox
Marxism (cf., Elliott, 1987). According to Althusser and his supporters, these
approaches were grounded in essentialist conceptions of society and change,
whether this took the form of self-determining human agents or determin-
ing causal laws, as is evident in the 1859 Preface, and both departed from
the spirit and the letter of Marx’s writings.
6. Althusser’s rethinking of the Marxist dialectic has also made it possible for
Marxist structuralists to develop regional conceptions of phenomena such as
the capitalist state, ideology, the city, and so forth (e.g., Castells, 1977; Jessop,
1982; Laclau, 1977; Poulantzas, 1973; 1978). For example, the early writings
of Manuel Castells present a structuralist conception of the city in advanced
capitalist societies, and urban politics more generally, by locating the ‘urban’
within the economic region of a social formation, especially in relation to
practices of collective consumption. Taking his cue from Althusser’s episte-
mological practice, in which the latter makes a sharp distinction between
science and ideology (Althusser, 1971; Althusser and Balibar, 1970), and in
which a scientific problematic is constituted around an authentic theoretical
object of investigation, Castells’s initial aim was to demarcate a legitimate
‘urban’ object of analysis.
7. This point is clearly evident, for example, in the development of Nicos
Poulantzas’s theory of the capitalist state. In a series of theoretical and
historical studies, Poulantzas initially drew upon Althusser’s return to Marx
to develop a regional theory of the capitalist state. His initial forays drew
upon the regional focus of Althusser’s work, and he thus elaborated a theory
of the capitalist state as a relatively autonomous structure or system within
286 Notes

the capitalist mode of production. Arguing against instrumentalist and sub-

jectivist accounts of the state, he thus developed a distinctively structuralist
account that stressed the functional role of the state in maintaining cohesion
(Poulantzas, 1969; 1973).
8. Hobbes himself had carefully divided his ‘natural philosophy’ (natural sci-
ence) from his ‘civil philosophy’ (political science), though the two were
linked by his belief that the methods of science could be used to understand
both the natural and social worlds; science could in this way prescribe correct
precepts and principles.
9. Russell Hardin has tightened Olson’s original definition of ‘public goods’.
According to Hardin, Samuelson’s definition of public goods centres on ben-
efits that are indivisible and non-excludable. However, because of the multiple
criteria for inclusion:
Very few of the goals or goods that groups seek can accurately be
described as pure public goods [in Samuelson’s terms]. [So] it is proba-
bly best not to confuse the analysis of collective action by treating it
as a problem in the provision of public goods. [Interest group] goods
need to be collective only in the sense that they are collectively pro-
vided . . . Olson’s analysis of collective action depends only . . . on de facto
infeasibility of exclusion.
(Hardin, 1982, p. 19, cited in Dunleavy, 1991, p. 82)

10. Stones argues that his strong structuration theory embodies a much bet-
ter grasp of ‘the implications of the centrality of the duality of structure to
structuration; the need to develop a greater sense of ontology-in-situ against
an overly exclusive emphasis on ontology-in-general pitched at the philo-
sophical and abstract level; the many areas of ontology within the province
of the duality of structure that have previously been inadequately developed
and insufficiently specified; the importance of epistemology and methodol-
ogy to the structuration project; the scope of purpose and question types
appropriate to structuration theory; the forms of methodological bracketing
(agent’s conduct and agent’s context analysis) necessary to unlock the empir-
ical potential of structuration theory; the need for structuration case studies
to be framed and mediated by other approaches, something that follows
naturally from the acknowledgement of the limits to structuration theory’s
scope’ (Stones, 2005, p. 8).
11. Stones also endeavours to deconstruct the sharp separation between realism
and structuration theory (e.g., Stones, 2001, pp. 177–97.)
12. Bhaskar explicitly construes the transcendental arguments, which he
employs to establish these claims as a species of retroductive reasoning
(Bhaskar, 1998, p. 50). This form of reasoning is also used in explaining
concrete phenomena (events, patterns, and so forth). Such explanations pre-
suppose the discovery of underlying causal or generative mechanisms that
account for the flux of empirical data we encounter in the world, such that
the logic of explanation is based on the contingent interaction of necessary
causal mechanisms. Moreover, ascertaining the existence and nature of a
mechanism consists in ‘the building of a model . . . of a mechanism, which
if it were to exist and act in the postulated way would account for the phe-
nomenon in question’ (Bhaskar, 1998, p. 12). This leads to a conception
 Notes 287

of natural science as a ‘continuous dialectical movement’ consisting of three

inter-related steps. Scientists begin by identifying a phenomenon (or range of
phenomena) to be investigated, before constructing hypotheses and empir-
ically testing the purported explanations. This then allows them to identify
the generative mechanisms at work. The latter become new phenomena to
be explained, and the dialectical process begins again (Bhaskar, 1998, p. 12;
see Glynos and Howarth, 2007, pp. 28–30).
13. Consider in this regard Bhaskar’s response to Benton on this point in the
Postscript of the third edition of The Possibility of Naturalism (Bhaskar,
1998).
14. More concretely, Jessop has integrated selected concepts and logics in French
regulation theory and then employed his framework to analyse the emer-
gence, consolidation, and policy impact of hegemonic projects, such as
Thatcherism and New Labour in the British context (Jessop, 2002b; 2004a;
Jessop et al., 1988). For example, set against the contradictions and crises
of the Keynesian welfare state in the 1960s and 1970s, Jessop charts the
way Thatcherism combined a neoliberal accumulation strategy, which pro-
moted a market-driven transition from the flawed Keynesian model, with
a stronger, yet smaller and more centralized state, which could enforce its
policy commitments, whilst imposing its will on those recalcitrant elements
that sought to defend the old order or which dared to propose alternatives.
In policy terms, the new economic strategy involved a commitment to pri-
vatization, deregulation, and the introduction of commercial criteria into
existing state practices and activities; the deregulation and liberalization
of the city in an effort to establish London as the centre of international
financial capital and to secure an export role for Britain through its special-
ization in financial services; the sponsoring of a market-generated industrial
recovery – the so-called supply-side revolution – which concentrated on the
encouragement of inward investment, the promotion of small business, the
expansion of new technology, and the development of labour policies that
emphasized greater flexibility; reduced direct taxes to expand the scope for
the operation of market forces through enhanced investor and consumer
choice; and the attempt to position the UK economy into ‘a dynamic multi-
national space’ (Jessop et al., 1988, p. 171). Beneath the commitment to
its macro-economic austerity strategy – the commitment to monetarism
and various drives to curb public expenditures – these five connected
sets of policies constituted the micro-economic supply-side dimension of
neoliberalism.
In his more recent writings, along with Ngai-Ling Sum, Jessop has supple-
mented his strategic relational approach by elaborating a method of ‘cultural
political economy’ in order to explore, for example, the shift from Fordist to
post-Fordist social formations (Jessop, 2004b; 2009; Jessop and Sum, 2006).
While accepting the material constraints of social structures – or ‘structural
selectivities’ – this ‘cultural turn’ recognizes the role of meaning-making in
sustaining the conditions for capital accumulation, and it draws attention
to particular forms of argumentation, narratives, and economic imaginaries
in the production and reproduction of social relations. The turn to cul-
ture, meaning, and the semiotic dimension of social relations has also led
Jessop to engage more fully with contemporary forms of discourse analysis,
288 Notes

especially Critical Discourse Analysis, which has been developed by Norman

Fairclough, Ruth Wodak, and Lilie Chouliaraki (Chouliaraki and Fairclough,
1999; Fairclough, 2001; Fairclough and Wodak, 1997).

5 Structure, Agency, and Affect

1. See Grove (2010), Shapiro, M. (1997; 1999; 2004), Tønder (2005); Tormey
(2001; 2004); Widder (2002).
2. This ‘decentring’ of the structure through social processes such as the exten-
sion of capitalist relations to new spheres of social life shatters already existing
identities and interests and literally induces an identity crisis for the sub-
ject. It is this ‘failure’ of the structure to confer identity to social actors that
‘compels’ the subject to act. In this sense, the subject is not simply deter-
mined by the structure; nor, however, does it constitute the structure. The
subject is forced to take decisions – or identify with certain political projects
and the discourses they articulate – when social identities are in crisis, and
structures need to be recreated. It is in the process of this identification that
political subjectivities are created and formed (Laclau, 1990). Once formed
and stabilized they become those subject positions that turn individuals into
social actors with certain characteristics and attributes. In sum, identification
involves agency, and the latter presupposes the dislocation and contingency
of social structures. The ideas presented in this concluding section build upon
and develop my contribution to Glynos and Howarth (2008b).
3. Such arguments have been developed by poststructuralists in a range of dif-
ferent historical contexts. For example, in a critique of mainstream theories
of democratic transition and democratization, focussing particularly on the
South African case, I have argued that transitions are invariably marked by
‘dislocated social structures’, in which ‘subjects are literally compelled to
become collective political agents intent on reconstituting a new order within
which identities can be stabilized’ (Howarth, 1998, p. 201). But I go on to
distinguish between decisions that are taken within more or less sedimented
sets of social relations (such as regimes and institutions), and decisions that
are taken about social structures themselves (see also Howarth, 2000a; 2004;
2006). Many more statements of this sort could be mobilized to confirm my
point.
4. Viewed against this background, Bevir and Rhodes’s (mis)representation of
poststructuralism presents us with a series of classical ‘either/ors’: either lan-
guage is constituted in a ‘bottom-up’ fashion on the basis of individual
utterances and meanings, or it is a fully fledged and all-determining structure
that fixes meaning from above, thus trying to ‘avoid all appeals to human
agency’ (Bevir and Rhodes, 2003, p. 22). Either the words and concepts of our
language represent the world, or there is no representation and reference at
all. Yet it is not clear why one should accept such loaded choices. After all, the
whole point of poststructuralist theories of language and human subjectivity
is to problematize the idea of a fully present subject and a fully constituted
linguistic structure, so that we are not forced to choose between, on the one
hand, an atomistic and referential conception of language, which is com-
posed of individual utterances that refer to states of affairs or reality, and on
 Notes 289

the other hand a concept of language as an all-pervasive substance, which is

completely closed and thus altogether external to subjectivity (cf., Derrida,
1976; 1978). Following Heidegger and Wittgenstein, and as developed by
Cavell and Derrida, my view is that linguistic signs and grammar have a
different, more complex, and intimate relationship with ‘reality’. Indeed,
rather than simply referring to a separate realm of pre-existing objects, the
articulations of language make the experience of reality possible for us, that
is, intelligible and meaningful, by furnishing the criteria for identifying and
individuating objects (Mulhall, 2001, pp. 93–7, 240–3). Of course, these reflec-
tions and theses presuppose a particular conception of social agents. They
also raise questions about the character of the structural constraints con-
fronting social actors in particular situations, as well as the role of power and
domination.

6 Rethinking Power and Domination

1. To illustrate his point, Foucault introduces a paradigmatic case of
domination:

[I]n the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we cannot say there was
only male power; the woman herself could do a lot of things: be unfaith-
ful to him, extract money from him, refuse him sexually. She was,
however, subject to a state of domination, in the measure where [there
were] no more than a certain number of tricks which never brought about
a reversal of the situation.
(Foucault, 1991b, p. 12)

2. Foucault’s later writings have also spawned a new way of thinking of gov-
ernment as an art of doing politics – an activity of governing issues and
subjectivities – which concerns the ‘how’ and ‘what’ of public interventions:
what Foucault famously termed the ‘conduct of conduct’. Government thus
concerns the whole range of practices and activities that are undertaken
by various agencies to shape the conduct of citizens and subjects. In this
perspective, government is best viewed as a plethora of heterogeneous and
ambiguous authorities, with diverse technologies, rationalities, discourses,
and modes of intervention. Indeed, its very unity as a system of institutions –
such that exists – is itself a political and ideological construction. He also
developed a novel form of critique, which focussed on the exposure of limits
and their possible transgression (see Foucault, 1984a).
3. Dahl’s focus on observable behaviour emerged, first, as a critique of elitist
studies of power (e.g., Mills, 1956), in which it was claimed that power is pos-
sessed by a restricted set of power brokers, rather than being distributed in a
pluralistic fashion. Dahl’s study of local power in New Haven, Connecticut,
thus sought to show that many groups, and not just elites, won key decisions
and thus possessed power (Dahl, 1961). But Dahl’s interest was also method-
ological, because he wanted to develop a legitimate model of scientific
endeavour that relied less on philosophical and metaphysical assumptions,
and more on the careful analysis of observable behaviour under rigorous
scientific conditions. His work is thus located in the positivist tradition of
290 Notes

research, in which theory is employed both to interpret empirical events,

and to evaluate the plausibility of putative theories. This conception of
theory differs from the conception advanced here.
4. Yet hegemony in this sense still admits of variation. Two opposed ideal
types can be specified. On the one hand, what we might term a situation of
‘organic hegemony’ represents a type of rule in which subjects actively con-
sent to a particular practice or regime, so that the role of force or domination
recedes into the background. On the other hand, at the opposite pole of the
continuum, we find a situation of ‘inorganic hegemony’, which designates a
practice or regime where subjects at best comply with, or even actively resist,
such forms so that relations of force, coercion, and compulsion are necessary
to secure an order.
5. However, it is important to stress that there is no a priori privileging of
equivalence or difference on critical or evaluative grounds. The two logics
are no more than regulative ideals, where equivalence involves the logic of
combination and difference a logic of substitution in which there is little
or no equivalence between demands. Thus, there is no way of saying that
equivalence is normatively preferred over difference, as the critical and nor-
mative implications of these logics are strictly contextual and perspectival.
As I shall argue later in this chapter, our normative evaluation of a particular
strategy or movement depends on the particular circumstances and condi-
tions under consideration, where it is quite possible that a pluralizing form
of political engagement or even an incorporating strategy is preferable to a
more equivalential form. Indeed, it is quite possible for political projects to
engage in both logics at the same time, or to combine these different logics
in a single campaign, though this requires great political skill and ingenu-
ity. The empirical implications of these remarks are explored in Griggs and
Howarth (2008). The normative aspects are highlighted and developed in
Norval (2007).
6. Here the question of government is not just about intractable questions of
sovereignty and legitimacy, of constitutional settlements and rules, or formal
decision-making procedures and outcomes; nor is government (or the state)
simply an instrument of class domination or ideological mystification, or
synonymous with different logics of capture and cooptation. In equal fash-
ion, government is not a neutral public arena where ‘major group conflicts
are debated and resolved’, or a neutral weathervane that merely registers and
reflects the different pressures and forces of society (Connolly, 1971, p. 8).
Instead, following Mitchell Dean and Nicholas Rose, it concerns the whole
range of practices and activities that are undertaken by various agencies and
authorities to shape the conduct of citizens and subjects (Rose, 1999; Dean,
1999).
7. This discussion builds upon Glynos and Howarth (2007; 2008b).
8. For example, in a very basic and obvious way, the articulation of the signifier
‘sustainable aviation’ by pro-aviation forces in the UK immediately provides
us with the belief that ‘we can have our cake and eat it’: we can worry a
little about the effects of aviation and binge-flying on the environment,
perhaps take some individualized actions such as carbon offsetting to
salve our consciences, but then continue to act in the same way. This is
because it is assumed that there are various technological fixes or carbon
 Notes 291

emission trading schemes that will enable aviation expansion and ecological
responsibility.
9. Their account of reproduction thus focusses on ‘the processes which permit
what exists to go on existing’ (Aglietta, 2000 p. 12).
10. They replace the idea of general equilibrium and the analysis of static
equilibrium, with ‘an analysis of dynamic processes of reabsorption of dise-
quilibria caused by accumulation’ (Boyer and Saillard cited in Jessop and
Sum, 2006, p. 6).
11. As numerous commentators have noted, there are several schools of regula-
tion theory. Indeed, Jessop and Sum have identified at least seven schools of
regulation theory. These are the Boccarien, the Grenoble, the Parisian, the
Nordic, the West German, the Amsterdam, and the American Radical School
(Jessop and Sum, 2006, pp. 18–30). I shall focus mainly on the Parisian
School, whose principal proponents include Aglietta, Boyer, and Lipietz.
12. Rule-following in this sense is similar to what Derrida calls the undecidable
logic of iterability in which each repetition of a sign in language is always
vulnerable to alteration. This is because each sign is differential and thus
dependent on context for its value, and because each sign must have the
capacity to break with each and every context, and be inserted into a new
chain of signifiers (Derrida, 1982).

7 Identity, Interests, and Political Subjectivity

1. Having offered a ‘perspicuous representation’ of the character of demands
for cultural recognition by ‘surveying the range of political struggles, which
have rendered cultural diversity problematic, causing it to become the locus
of philosophical reflection’, Tully also seeks to elucidate the nature and signif-
icance of claims for the constitutional recognition of cultural diversity, where
he outlines three conventions – mutual recognition, continuity, and con-
sent – which would allow speakers their due (Tully, 1995, p. 1). In so doing,
he assumes that ‘[c]ulture is an irreducible and constitutive aspect of poli-
tics’ (Tully, 1995, p. 6). But what does this ‘certain priority’ mean and entail?
It means, first, the recognition of the fact that ‘being able to speak in one’s
own voice requires that one is able to speak in one’s own ways; so that we
may then consent in our own voice’. Moreover, as an initial step in rendering
members their due with respect to their own voicing of consent Tully invokes
the principle of ‘mutual recognition’ (Tully, 1995, p. 7). Yet this requires a
reworking of the concept of culture, so that cultures are not homogenous
and essential, but overlapping, interactive, and internally negotiated (Tully,
1995, p. 10). But this also means that identity, and so the meaning of any
culture must be seen in ‘aspectival rather than essential’ terms, in which the
experience of otherness is internal to one’s identity (Tully, 1995, pp. 11, 13).
In short, then, Tully provides one possible answer to the question as
to whether a modern constitution can recognize and accommodate cul-
tural diversity, by reconceptualizing constitution-making as an ‘intercultural
dialogue’. In his words:
292 Notes

A contemporary constitution can recognise cultural diversity if it is recon-

ceived as what might be called a ‘form of accommodation’ of cultural
diversity. A constitution should be seen as a form of activity, an inter-
cultural dialogue in which the culturally diverse sovereign citizens of
contemporary societies negotiate agreements on their forms of association
over time in accordance with the three conventions of mutual recognition,
consent and cultural continuity.
(Tully, 1995, p. 30)
2. Žižek, of course, would not disagree with Connolly’s claim that the logic of
minoritization goes hand in hand with the logic of late capitalism. How-
ever, for Žižek, both logics have to be challenged in the name of a global
anti-capitalist project. In Žižek’s view, the growth of identity politics and
multiculturalism provides an ideological buttress to the logic of late capitalism
(Žižek, 1997).
3. See Butler (1998; 2001), Benhabib (2002) and Fraser and Honneth (2003).
4. As I argue later in this chapter, poststructuralists and critical theorists in
various disciplines have problematized this essentialist and anti-historicist
perspective. Drawing on their detailed understandings of particular contexts,
they have focussed on the contingent and constructed character of iden-
tity, though they also eschew the complete plasticity of identity/difference
(Connolly, 1991; Howarth, 1997; Norval, 2001; Said, 1995).
5. It should be noted that this work builds upon and extends Hirschman’s argu-
ment about ‘participation benefits’ in public action (Hirschman, 1982, p. 85).
Similarly, Jordan and Maloney have emphasized a series of ‘soft-incentives’
in their heterodox supply-side account of environmental movements (Jordan
and Maloney, 1997, pp. 75–105).
6. In a famous footnote, Olson explicitly rules out explanations based purely
on non-material incentives, arguing that these other motivations can
be explained by recourse to material selective incentives (Olson, 1965,
p. 61, n. 17).
7. In this respect, my account differs from other critiques of rational choice that
have used the concept of identity (Monroe, 1997, p. 291).
8. In this respect, my analysis has some affinities with the various sociological
critiques of resource mobilization theory (e.g., Castells, 1997; Melucci, 1989).

Conclusion
1. Wittgenstein uses these words in developing his thoughts about the appropri-
ate method of doing philosophy, where the latter is informed by the recourse
to our ordinary expressions and practices so as to rid us of bewitching pictures
and false problems (see Wittgenstein, 1967, Remarks 126, 128).
Bibliography

Adorno, T. (1973) Negative Dialectics, New York: Seabury Press.

Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, M. (1973) Dialectic of Enlightenment, London: Allen
Lane.
Aglietta, M. (2000) A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: The US Experience, London:
Verso.
Althusser, L. (1969) For Marx, London: Verso.
Althusser, L. (1971) Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays, New York: Monthly
Review Press.
Althusser, L. and Balibar, E. (1970) Reading ‘Capital’, London: Verso.
Alvesson, M. (2002) Postmodernism and Social Research, Buckingham: Open Uni-
versity Press.
Alvesson, M. and Willmott, H. (1992) ‘On the Idea of Emancipation in Man-
agement and Organization Studies’, Academy of Management Review, 17(3):
432–64.
Alvesson, M. and Willmott, H. (eds) (2003) Studying Management Critically,
London: Sage.
Alvesson, M., Willmott, H., and Bridgman, T. (eds) (1999) The Oxford Handbook of
Critical Management Studies, Oxford: Open University Press.
Andersen, N. A. (2008) Partnerships: Machines of Possibility, Bristol: Policy Press.
Andersen, N. A. (2009) Power at Play, London: Palgrave.
Anderson, P. (1983) In the Tracks of Historical Materialism, London: Verso.
Anderson, P. (1998) The Origins of Postmodernity, London: Verso.
Apter, D. A. (2006) ‘Duchamp’s Urinal’, in R. E. Goodin and C. Tilly (eds) The
Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Archer, M. (1995) Realist Social Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Arendt, H. (1978) The Life of the Mind, New York: Harcourt.
Ashenden, S. and Owen, D. (1999) ‘Introduction: Foucault, Habermas and the
Politics of Critique’, in S. Ashenden and D. Owen (eds) Foucault Contra
Habermas: Recasting the Dialogue Between Genealogy and Critical Theory, London:
Sage Publications.
Ashley, R. (1989) ‘Living on Border Lines: Man, Poststructuralism, and
War’, in J. Der Derian and M. Shapiro (eds) International/Intertextual Rela-
tions: Postmodern Readings of World Politics, Lexington, MA: Lexington
Press.
Bachrach, P. and Baratz, S. M. (1962) ‘Two Faces of Power’, American Political
Science Review, 56(4): 947–52.
Bachrach, P. and Baratz, S. M. (1963) ‘Decisions and Nondecisions: An Analytical
Framework’, American Political Science Review, 57(3): 632–42.
Bachrach, P. and Baratz, S. M. (1970) Power and Poverty: Theory and Practice,
New York: Oxford University Press.

293
294 Bibliography

Badiou, A. (2005) Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy, London:
Continuum.
Badiou, A. (2006) Polemics, London: Verso.
Balibar, É. (1995) The Philosophy of Marx, London: Verso.
Barker, J. (2002) Alain Badiou: A Critical Introduction, London: Pluto Press.
Barnett, C. (2003) Culture and Democracy: Media, Space and Representation,
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Barry, B. (2001) Culture and Equality, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Barthes, R. (1967) Elements of Semiology, London: Cape.
Barthes, R. (1973) Mythologies, London: Paladin Books.
Barthes, R. (1990) S/Z, Oxford: Blackwell.
Beasley-Murray, J. (2003) ‘On Posthegemony’, Bulletin of Latin American Research,
22(1): 117–25.
Beasley-Murray, J. (2010) Posthegemony: Political Theory and Latin America,
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Bell, D. (1996) The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, New York: Basic Books.
Belsey, C. (2002) Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Belsey, C. (2005) Culture and the Real, London: Routledge.
Benhabib, S. (2002) The Claims of Culture, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Bennett, J. (2001) The Enchantment of Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Bennett, J. (2007) ‘Edible Matter’, New Left Review, 45: 133–45.
Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Durham: Duke
University Press.
Benton, T. (1981) ‘ “Objective” Interests and the Sociology of Power’, Sociology,
15: 161–84.
Benton, T. (1984) The Rise and Fall of Structural Marxism: Althusser and His
Influence, London: Macmillan.
Benton, T. and Craib, I. (2001) Philosophy of Social Science: The Philosophical
Foundations of Social Science, London: Palgrave.
Benveniste, E. (1971) Problems in General Linguistics, Coral Gables, FL: University
of Miami Press.
Bernet, R. (1998) ‘Husserl’, in S. Critchley and W. R. Schroeder (eds) A Companion
to Continental Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 198–207.
Bertramsen, R. B., Thomsen, J. P. F., and J. Torfing, J. (1990) State, Economy and
Society, London: Unwin Hyman.
Bevir, M. (2006) ‘Political Studies as Narrative and Science’, Political Studies, 54(3):
583–606.
Bevir, M. (2011) The Making of British Socialism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-
sity Press.
Bevir, M. and Rhodes, R. (2003) Interpreting British Governance, London: Routledge.
Bevir, M. and Rhodes, R. (2004) ‘Interpretation as Method, Explanation and
Critique’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 6: 156–61.
Bevir, M. and Rhodes, R. (2005) ‘Interpretation and Its Others’, Australian Journal
of Political Science, 40(2): 169–87.
Bevir, M. and Rhodes, R. (2006) ‘Interpretive Approaches to British Governance
and Politics’, British Politics, 1: 84–112.
 Bibliography 295

Bhaskar, R. (1975) A Realist Theory of Science, London: Verso.

Bhaskar, R. (1989) Reclaiming Reality, London: Verso.
Bhaskar, R. (1991) Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom, London: Verso.
Bhaskar, R. (1998) The Possibility of Naturalism, 3rd ed., London: Routledge.
Bird, C. (1999) The Myth of Liberal Individualism, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
Blaikie, N. (2007) Approaches to Social Enquiry, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Blyth, M. (1997) ‘ “Any More Bright Ideas?” The Ideational Turn of Comparative
Political Economy’, Comparative Politics, 29(2): 229–50.
Blyth, M. (2002) Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in
the Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bobbio, N. (1988) ‘Gramsci and the Concept of Civil Society’, in J. Keane (ed)
Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives, London: Verso.
Boggs, C. (1986) Social Movements and Political Power, Philadelphia, PA: Temple
University Press.
Böhm, S. (2005) Repositioning Organization Theory: Impossibilities and Strategies,
London: Palgrave.
Boudon, R. (1971) The Uses of Structuralism, London: Heinemann.
Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
Bové, P. (1992) In the Wake of Theory, Hanover: Wesleyan University Press.
Boyer, R. (1990) The Regulation School: A Critical Introduction, New York: Columbia
University Press.
Boyer, R. and Sayard, Y. (2002) Régulation Theory: The State of the Art, London:
Routledge.
Bradshaw, A. (1976) ‘A Critique of Steven Lukes’ Power: A Radical View’, Sociology,
10: 121–27.
Brittan, S. (1975) ‘The Economic Consequences of Democracy’, British Journal of
Political Science, 5: 129–59.
Brown, W. (1993) ‘Wounded Attachments’, Political Theory, 21(3): 390–410.
Brown, W. (1995) States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity, Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Brown, W. (2006) Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Brown, A., Fleetwood, S., and Roberts, J. M. (2002) ‘The Marriage of Critical Real-
ism and Marxism’, in A. Brown, S. Fleetwood and J. M. Roberts (eds) Critical
Realism and Marxism, London: Routledge.
Bulfinch, T. (1981) Myths of Greece and Rome, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Burman, E. (1994) Deconstructing Developmental Psychology, London: Routledge.
Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble, London: Routledge.
Butler, J. (1993) Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”, London:
Routledge.
Butler, J. (1997) The Psychic Life of Power, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Butler, J. (1998) ‘Merely Cultural’, New Left Review, 227: 33–44.
Butler, J. (2000) ‘Restaging the Universal: Hegemony and the Limits of For-
malism’, in J. Butler, E. Laclau, and S. Žižek (eds) Contingency, Hegemony,
Universality, London: Verso.
Butler, J. (2001) ‘Doing Justice to Someone’, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay
Studies, 7(4): 621–36.
296 Bibliography

Butler, J. (2004) Undoing Gender, London: Routledge.

Butler, J., Laclau, E., and Zizek, S. (2000) Contingency, Hegemony, Universality,
London: Verso.
Buzan, B. and Weaver, O. (2003) Regions and Powers, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Byrne, P. (1997) Social Movements in Britain, London: Routledge.
Byrne, P. (1998) Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences, London: Routledge.
Calhoun, C. (1994) Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, Oxford: Blackwell.
Callinicos, A. (1976) Althusser’s Marxism, London: Pluto.
Callinicos, A. (2008) ‘Critical Realism and Beyond: Roy Bhaskar’s Dialectic’, in
J. Bidet and S. Kovelakis (eds) Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism, Brill:
Leiden.
Campbell, D. (1998) National Deconstruction, Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press.
Carpentier, N. (2007) ‘From Individual Tragedy to Societal Dislocation: The
Filmic Representation of Tragedy, Dislocation, and Cultural Trauma in the
Dreyfus Affair’, in N. Carpentier (ed) Culture, Trauma, and Conflict: Cul-
tural Studies Perspectives on War, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholar Publishing,
pp. 244–70.
Carpentier, N. (2011) Media and Participation: A Site of Ideological-Democratic
Struggle, Bristol: Intellectual.
Carrabine, E. (2004) Power, Discourse and Resistance, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing.
Carver, T. (1996) Gender Is Not a Synonym for Women, Boulder, CO: Lynn Reiner.
Carver, T. (1999) The Postmodern Marx, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Castells, M. (1976) ‘Theoretical Propositions for an Experimental Study of Urban
Social Movements’, in C. Pickvance (ed) Urban Sociology, London: Tavistock
Publications.
Castells, M. (1977) The Urban Question, London: Edward Arnold.
Castells, M. (1978) City, Class and Power, London: Macmillan.
Castells, M. (1983) The City and the Grassroots, London: Edward Arnold.
Castells, M. (1989) The Informational City, Oxford: Blackwell.
Castells, M. (1996) The Rise of the Network Society, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Castells, M. (1997) The Power of Identity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Caute, D. (1988) Sixty-Eight: Year of the Barricades, London: Hamilton.
Chambers, S. (2003) Untimely Politics, New York: New York University Press.
Chambers, S. (2007) ‘Normative Violence after 9/11: Rereading the Politics of
Gender Trouble’, New Political Science, 29(1): 43–60.
Chambers, S. (2009) The Queer Politics of Television, London: Taurus.
Chambers, S. and Carver, T. (2008a) Judith Butler’s Precarious Politics: Critical
Encounters, London: Routledge.
Chambers, S. and Carver, T. (eds) (2008b) William E. Connolly: Democracy,
Pluralism and Political Theory, Abingdon: Routledge.
Chong, D. (1991) Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement, Chicago, IL:
Chicago University Press.
Chouliaraki, L. and Fairclough, N. (1999) Discourse in Late Modernity, Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Clarke, J., Newman, J., Smith, N., Vidler, E., and Westmarland, L. (2007) Creating
Citizen-Consumers: Changing Publics and Changing Public Services, London: Sage.
Clegg, S. (1989) Frameworks of Power, London: Sage.
 Bibliography 297

Clough, P. (ed) (2007) The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, Durham: Duke
University Press.
Cohen, G. A. (1978) Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Coles, R. (1992) Self/Power/Other: Political Theory and Dialogical Ethics, Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press.
Coles, R. (1997) Rethinking Generosity: Critical Theory and the Politics of Caritas,
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Coles, R. (2005) Beyond Gated Politics, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press.
Connolly, W. E. (1971) ‘The Challenge to Pluralist Theory’, in W. E. Connolly (ed)
The Bias of Pluralism, New York: Atherton.
Connolly, W. E. (1991) Identity/Difference, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Connolly, W. E. (1995) The Ethos of Pluralization, Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press.
Connolly, W. E. (1996) ‘Suffering, Justice, and the Politics of Becoming’, Culture,
Medicine, and Psychiatry, 20(3): 251–77.
Connolly, W. E. (1999) ‘Assembling the Left’, Boundary 2, 26(3): 47–54.
Connolly, W. E. (2002a) Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed, Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press.
Connolly, W. E. (2002b), ‘Preface: Confessing Identity/Belonging to Difference’,
in W. E. Connolly, Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox,
expanded ed., Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Connolly, W. E. (2004a) ‘Method, Problem, Faith’, in I. Shapiro, R. M. Smith,
and T. E. Masoud (eds) Problems and Methods in the Study of Politics, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Connolly, W. E. (2004b) ‘The Ethos of Democratization’, in S. Critchley and
O. Marchant (eds) Laclau: A Critical Reader, London: Routledge.
Connolly, W. E. (2005a) Pluralism, Durham: Duke University Press.
Connolly, W. E. (2005b) ‘Immanence, Abundance, Democracy’, in L. Tønder and
L. Thomassen (eds) Radical Democracy: Politics Between Abundance and Lack,
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Connolly, W. E. (2008a) Capitalism and Christianity, American Style, Durham: Duke
University Press.
Connolly, W. E. (2008b) ‘An Interview with William Connolly’, in S. Chambers
and T. Carver (eds) William E. Connolly: Democracy, Pluralism and Political
Theory, London: Routledge.
Connolly, W. E. (2010) A World of Becoming, Durham: Duke University Press.
Connolly, W. E. (2012) ‘Steps Toward an Ecology of Late Capitalism’, Theory &
Event, 15(1).
Coole, D. (2007) Merleau-Ponty and Modern Politics after Anti-Humanism, London:
Rowman and Littlefield.
Coole, D. and Frost, S. (2010) ‘Introducing the New Materialisms’, in D. Coole
and S. Frost (eds) New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, Durham: Duke
University Press.
Copjec, J. (1994a) Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists, Cambridge:
MIT Press.
Copjec, J. (1994b) ‘Sex and the Euthanasia of Reason’, in J. Copjec (ed) Supposing
the Subject, London: Verso.
298 Bibliography

Copjec, J. (2003) Imagine There’s No Woman, Cambridge: MIT Press.

Coward, R. and Ellis, J. (1977) Language and Materialism: Developments in Semiology
and the Theory of the Subject, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Cox, R. (1987) Production, Power and World Order, New York: Columbia University
Press.
Critchley, S. (1992) The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas, Oxford:
Blackwell.
Critchley, S. (1998) ‘Metaphysics in the Dark: A Response to Richard Rorty and
Ernesto Laclau’, Political Theory, 26(6): 803–17.
Critchley, S. (1999) ‘Introduction: What Is Continental Philosophy?’, in
S. Critchley and W. Schroeder (eds) A Companion to Continental Philosophy,
Oxford: Blackwell.
Critchley, S. (2000) ‘Heidegger for Beginners’, in J. Faulconer and M. Wrathall
(eds) Appropriating Heidegger, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Critchley, S. (2004) ‘Is there a Normative Deficit in the Theory of Hegemony?’, in
S. Critchley and O. Marchart (eds) Laclau: A Critical Reader, London: Palgrave.
Critchley, S. (2007) Infinitely Demanding, London: Verso.
Crossley, N. (2002) Making Sense of Social Movements, Buckingham: Open Univer-
sity Press.
Culler, J. (1983) On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism,
London: Routledge.
Cutler, A., Hindess, B., Hirst, P., and Hussain, A. (1977) Marx’s Capital and
Capitalism Today, London: Routledge, Kegan and Paul.
Dahl, R. (1957) ‘The Concept of Power’, Behavioral Science, 2: 201–15.
Dahl, R. (1961) Who Governs, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Dahlberg, L. and Phelan, S. (eds) (2011) Discourse Theory and Critical Media Politics,
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Davidson, D. (1980) Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Davidson, D. (1986) ‘A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs’, in E. Lepore (ed) Truth
and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, Cambridge:
Blackwell.
Davies, J. (2011) Challenging Governance Theory, Bristol: Policy Press.
Dawkins, R. (1998) ‘Postmodernism Disrobed’, Nature, 394: 141–43.
Day, R. (2005) Gramsci Is Dead, London: Pluto Press.
Dean, M. (1999) Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society, London: Sage.
Dean, J. (2006) Žižek’s Politics, London: Routledge.
Dean, J. (2010) Rethinking Contemporary Feminist Politics, London: Palgrave.
de Goede, M. (2005) Virtue, Fortune, and Faith: A Genealogy of Finance,
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
de Goede, M. (ed) (2006) International Political Economy and Poststructural Politics,
London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Deleuze, G. (1994) Difference and Repetition, London: Athlone Press.
Deleuze, G. (1995) Negotiations, New York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G. (2004) Desert Islands and Other Texts, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophre-
nia, Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota Press.
Der Derian, J. and Shapiro, M. (1989) International/Inter-Textual Relations:
Postmodern Readings of World Politics, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
 Bibliography 299

Derrida, J. (1976) Of Grammatology, Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University

Press.
Derrida, J. (1978) Writing and Difference, London: Routledge.
Derrida, J. (1981a) Positions, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Derrida, J. (1981b) Dissemination, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Derrida, J. (1982) Margins of Philosophy, Brighton: Harvester Press.
Derrida, J. (1984) ‘My Chances/Mes Chances: A Rendezvous with Some Epicurean
Stereophonies’, in Joseph H. Smith and William Kerrigan (eds) Taking Chances:
Derrida, Psychoanalysis, and Literature, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Derrida, J. (1989) Edmund Husserl’s ‘Origin of Geometry’: An Introduction, Lincoln,
NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Derrida, J. (2002) Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews, 1971–2001, Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press.
Descombes, V. (1980) Modern French Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
Devenney, M. (2004) Ethics and Politics in Contemporary Theory: Between Critical
Theory and Post-Marxism, London: Routledge.
Dews, P. (1987) Logics of Disintegration: Post-Structuralist Thought and the Claims of
Critical Theory, London: Verso.
Disch, L. (1999) ‘Judith Butler and the Politics of the Performative’, Political
Theory, 27(4): 545–59.
Dosse, F. (1997) History of Structuralism: The Rising Sign, 1945–66, Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Dosse, F. (2012) ‘Deleuze and Structuralism’, in D. Smith and H. Somers-Hall
(eds) The Cambridge Companion to Deleuze, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Dowding, K. (1996) Power, Buckinghshire: Open University Press.
Dreyfus, H. (1991) Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time,
Division I, Cambridge: MIT Press.
Dreyfus, H. and Rabinow, P. (1983) Michel Foucault, Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Ducrot. O. and Todorov, T. (1979) Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Sciences of
Language, Baltimore, MA: The Johns Hopkins Press.
Dummett, M. (1986) ‘ “Nice Derangement of Epitaphs”: Some Comments on
Davidson and Hacking’, in E. Lepore (ed) Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives
on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, Cambridge: Blackwell.
Dunleavy, P. (1991) Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice: Economic Explana-
tions in Political Science, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Eagleton, T. (1996) The Illusions of Postmodernism, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Eagleton, T. (2003) After Theory, London: Allen Lane.
Elliott, G. (1987) Althusser: The Detour of Theory, London: Verso.
Elster, J. (1985) Making Sense of Marx, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Elster, J. (1989) Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Escobar, A. (1995) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third
World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Fairclough, N. (1995) Media Discourse, London: Arnold.
300 Bibliography

Fairclough, N. (2001) ‘Critical Discourse Analysis as a Method in Social Science

Research’, in R. Wodak and M. Meyer (eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis,
London: Sage.
Fairclough, N. and Wodak, R. (1997) ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’, in T. van Dijk
(ed) Discourse as Social Interaction, London: Sage.
Farr, J. (ed) (1987) Idioms of Inquiry: Critique and Renewal in Political Science,
Albany: State University of New York Press.
Femia, J. (1981) Gramsci’s Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness and the
Revolutionary Process, Oxford: Clarendon.
Ferguson, J. (1994) The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticization, and
Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Ferguson, J. (2006) Global Shadows, Durham: Duke University Press.
Finlayson, A. (2004) ‘Political Science, Political Ideas and Rhetoric’, Economy and
Society, 33(4): 528–49.
Finlayson, A. (2007) ‘From Beliefs to Arguments: Interpretive Methodology and
Rhetorical Political Analysis’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations,
9: 545–63.
Finlayson, A. and Martin, J. (2008) ‘It Ain’t What You Say . . . : British Political
Studies and the Analysis of Speech and Rhetoric’, British Politics, 3: 445–64.
Fischer, F. (2009) Democracy and Expertise: Reorienting Policy Inquiry, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Fleetwood, S. (2001) ‘Causal Laws, Functional Relations and Tendencies’, Review
of Political Economy, 13(2): 202–20.
Fleetwood, S. (2002) ‘What Kind of Theory Is Marx’s Theory of Value? A Criti-
cal Realist Inquiry’, in A. Brown, S. Fleetwood, and J. M. Roberts (eds) Critical
Realism and Marxism, London: Routledge.
Flyvbjerg, B. (1998) ‘Habermas and Foucault: Thinkers for Civil Society?’, British
Journal of Sociology, 49(2): 208–33.
Foucault, M. (1970) The Order of Things, London: Tavistock.
Foucault, M. (1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge, London: Tavistock.
Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Foucault, M. (1978) ‘Politics and the Study of Discourse’, Ideology and Conscious-
ness, 3: 7–26.
Foucault, M. (1979) The History of Sexuality, London: Allen Lane.
Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–
1977, New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1981) ‘The Order of Discourse’, in R. Young (ed) Untying the Text,
London: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1982) ‘The Subject and Power’, in H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow (eds)
Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Brighton: Harvester.
Foucault, M. (1983) ‘Structuralism and Post-Structuralism: An Interview with
Michel Foucault’, Telos, 55: 195–211.
Foucault, M. (1984a) ‘What is Enlightenment?’, in P. Rabinow (ed) The Foucault
Reader, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Foucault, M. (1984b) ‘Polemics, Politics and Problematizations: An Interview’, in
P. Rabinow (ed) The Foucault Reader, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Foucault, M. (1984c) ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’, in P. Rabinow (ed) The
Foucault Reader, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Foucault, M. (1985) The Use of Pleasure, New York: Pantheon.
 Bibliography 301

Foucault, M. (1988a) The Care of the Self, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Foucault, M. (1988b) ‘Politics and Reason’, in L. D. Kritzman (ed) Michel Foucault.
Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977–1984, London:
Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1991a) ‘Governmentality’, in G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. H.
Miller (eds) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, London: Harvester
Wheatsheaf, pp. 87–104.
Foucault, M. (1991b) ‘The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom’,
in J. Bernauer and D. Rasmussen (eds) The Final Foucault, Massachusetts:
MIT Press.
Foucault, M. (2008) The Birth of Biopolitics, London: Palgrave.
Foweraker, J. (1995) Theorising Social Movements, London: Pluto.
Fraser, N. (1997a) Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections of the ‘Postsocialist’ Condi-
tion, New York: Routledge.
Fraser, N. (1997b) ‘A Rejoinder to Iris Young’, New Left Review, 223: 126–29.
Fraser, N. and Honneth, A. (2003) Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-
Philosophical Exchange, London: Verso.
Fraser, N. and Nicholson, L. (1990) Social Criticism without Philosophy:
An Encounter Between Feminism and Post-Modernism’, in L. Nicholson (ed)
Feminism/Post-Modernism, London: Routledge.
Freeman, R. and Maybin, J. (2011) ‘Documents, Practices and Policy’, Evidence
and Policy, 7(2): 155–70.
Fuller, S. (1998) ‘A Social Epistemology of the Structure-Agency Craze: From Con-
tent to Context’, in A. Sica (ed) What Is Social Theory? The Philosophical Debates,
Oxford: Blackwell.
Furlong, P. J. (1991) Between Crown and Swastika, Middletown: Wesleyan Univer-
sity Press.
Gadamer, H.-G. (1975) Truth and Method, London: Sheed and Ward.
Gadet, F. (1989) Saussure and Contemporary Culture, London: Hutchinson.
Gallie, W. B. (1956) ‘Essentially Contested Concepts’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, 56: 167–98.
Geras, N. (1972) ‘Althusser’s Marxism: An Account and Assessment’, New Left
Review, 71: 236–46.
Geras, N. (1987) ‘Post-Marxism?’, New Left Review, 163: 40–82.
Geras, N. (1988) ‘Ex-Marxism without Substance’, New Left Review, 169: 34–61.
Geras, N. (1990) Discourses of Extremity, London: Verso.
Gibson-Graham, J. K. (1996) The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist
Critique of Political Economy, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2006) A Postcapitalist Politics, Minneapolis, MN: University
of Minnesota Press.
Giddens, A. (1976) New Rules of Sociological Method, London: Hutchinson.
Giddens, A. (1977) Studies in Social and Political Theory, London: Hutchinson.
Giddens, A. (1979) Central Problems in Social Theory, London: Macmillan.
Giddens, A. (1982) Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory, London: Macmillan.
Giddens, A. (1984) The Constitution of Society, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Giddens, A. (1987a) ‘Structuralism, Post-Structuralism and the Production of Cul-
ture’, in Anthony Giddens and Jonathan H. Turner (eds) Social Theory Today,
Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 195–223.
Giddens, A. (1987b) Social Theory and Modern Sociology, Cambridge: Polity Press.
302 Bibliography

Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Gilbert, J. (2007) ‘All the Right Questions, All the Wrong Answers’, in P. Bowman
and R. Stamp (eds) The Truth of Žižek, London: Continuum.
Gilbert, J. (2008) ‘Deleuzian Politics? A Survey and Some Suggestions’, New
Formations, 68: 10–33.
Gilroy, P. (1987) There Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack, London: Unwin Hyman.
Glynos, J. (2001) ‘The Grip of Ideology’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 6(2):
191–214.
Glynos, J. (2008a) ‘Self-Transgressive Enjoyment as a Freedom Fetter’, Political
Studies, 56(3): 679–704.
Glynos, J. (2008b) ‘Ideological Fantasy at Work’, Journal of Political Ideologies,
13(3): 275–96.
Glynos, J. and Howarth, D. (2007) Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and
Political Theory, London: Routledge.
Glynos, J. and Howarth, D. (2008a) ‘Structure, Agency and Power in Political
Analysis: Beyond Contextualized Self-Interpretations’, Political Studies Review,
6: 155–69.
Glynos, J. and Howarth, D. (2008b) ‘Critical Explanation in Social Science:
A Logics Approach’, Swiss Journal of Sociology, 34(1): 5–35.
Glynos, J., Howarth, D., Norval, A., and Speed, E. (2009) ‘Discourse Analysis:
Varieties and Methods’, ESRC National Centre for Research Methods Review Paper,
ESRC National Centre for Research Methods, NCRM 014.
Gofas, A. and Hay, C. (2010) ‘Varieties of Ideational Explanation’, in A. Gofas
and C. Hay (eds) The Role of Ideas in Political Analysis: A Portrait of Contemporary
Debates, London: Routledge.
Goldstein, P. (2005) Post-Marxist Theory, Albany, NY: SUNY.
Gottweis, H. (2006) ‘Rhetoric in Policy Making: Between Logos, Ethos, and
Pathos’, in F. Fischer (ed) Handbook of Public Policy, London: Taylor and
Francis.
Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks, London: Lawrence and
Wishart.
Grant, R. (1990) Oakeshott, London: Claridge Press.
Grant, R. (2000) The Politics of Sex and Other Essays, London: Palgrave.
Grant, R. (2003) Imagining the Real: Essays on Politics, Ideology and Literature,
London: Palgrave.
Griggs, S. and Howarth, D. (2000) ‘New Environmental Movements and Direct
Action Protest: The Campaign Against Manchester Airport’s Second Runway’,
in D. Howarth, A. J. Norval and Y. Stavrakakis (eds) Discourse Theory and Polit-
ical Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies and Social Change, Manchester: Manchester
University Press.
Griggs, S. and Howarth, D. (2002a) ‘An Alliance of Interest and Identity? Explain-
ing the Campaign Against Manchester Airport’s Second Runway’, Mobilization,
7(1): 43–58.
Griggs, S. and Howarth, D. (2002b) ‘The Work of Ideas and Interests in Public
Policy’, in A. Finlayson and J. Valentine (eds), Politics and Post-Structuralism:
An Introduction, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Griggs, S. and Howarth, D. (2004) ‘A Transformative Political Campaign? The
New Rhetoric of Protest Against Airport Expansion in the UK’, Journal of Political
Ideologies, 9(2): 167–87.
 Bibliography 303

Griggs, S. and Howarth, D. (2007) ‘Protest Movements, Environmental Activism

and Environmentalism in the United Kingdom’, in J. Pretty, A. S. Ball,
T. Benton, J. Guivant, D. R. Lee, D. Orr, M. J. Pfeffer and H. Ward (eds) The
Sage Handbook of Environment and Society, London: Sage.
Griggs, S. and Howarth, D. (2008) ‘Populism, Localism and Environmental Poli-
tics: The Logic and Rhetoric of the Stop Stansted Expansion Campaign in the
United Kingdom’, Planning Theory, 7(2): 123–44.
Griggs, S. and Howarth, D. (2012) ‘Phronesis, Logics and Critical Policy Analysis:
Heathrow’s “Third Runway” and the Politics of Sustainable Aviation in the UK’,
in B. Flyvbjerg, T. Landman, and S. Schram (eds) Real Social Science: Applied
Phronesis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Griggs, S. and Howarth, D. (2013) The Politics of Airport Expansion in the United
Kingdom: Hegemony, Policy and the Rhetoric of ‘Sustainable Aviation’, Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
Grove, J. (2010) ‘Must We Persist to Continue? Critical Responsiveness beyond
the Limits of the Human Species’, in A. Finlayson (ed) Democracy and Pluralism,
London: Routledge.
Habermas, J. (1976) Legitimation Crisis, London: Heinemann.
Habermas, J. (1978) Knowledge and Human Interests, 2nd ed., London: Heinemann
Educational.
Habermas, J. (1981) ‘New Social Movements’, Telos, 49: 33–7.
Habermas, J. (1984) The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1. Reason and the
Rationalization of Society, London: Heinemann.
Habermas, J. (1987) The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity
Press.
Habermas, J. (1996) Between Facts and Norms, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Habermas, J. (2008) Between Naturalism and Religion, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hacking, I. (1985) ‘Styles of Scientific Reasoning’, in J. Rajchman and C. West
(eds) Post-Analytical Philosophy, New York: Columbia University Press.
Hacking, I. (1986) ‘The Parody of Conversation’, in E. Lepore (ed) Truth and
Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, Cambridge:
Blackwell, pp. 447–58.
Hajer, M. (1995) The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernization
and the Policy Process, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hajer, M. (2009) Authoritative Governance: Policy-Making in the Age of Mediatization,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hajer, M. and Wagenaar, H. (2003) Deliberative Policy Analysis, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Hall, S. (1983) ‘The Great Moving Right Show’, in S. Hall and M. Jacques (eds)
The Politics of Thatcherism, London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Hall, S. (1986) ‘Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity’, Journal
of Communication Inquiry, 10(2): 5–27.
Hall, S. (1988) The Hard Road to Renewal, London: Verso.
Hammond, M., Howarth, J., and Keat, R. (1991) Understanding Phenomenology,
Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Hardin, R. (1982) Collective Action, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Hardt, M. (2007) ‘What Affects are Good For’, in P. T. Clough and J. Halley (eds)
The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, Durham: Duke University Press.
304 Bibliography

Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2000) Empire, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Harsanyi, J. C. (1976) Essays on Ethics, Social Behavior, and Scientific Explanation,
Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Harvey, N. (1998) The Chiapas Rebellion: The Struggle for Land and Democracy,
Durham: Duke University Press.
Hassan, I. (1987) The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture,
Columbus, OH: Ohio State University.
Hay, C. (1995) ‘Structure and Agency’, in D. Marsh and G. Stoker (eds) Theory and
Methods in Political Science, London: Macmillan.
Hay, C. (1997) ‘Divided by a Common Language: Discontentment and the
Semantics of Power’, Politics, 17(1): 45–52.
Hay, C. (2002) Political Analysis, Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Hay, C. (2006) ‘Political Ontology’, in R. E. Goodin and C. Tilly (eds) The
Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Hay, C. (2007) ‘Constructivist Institutionalism’, in R. A. W. Rhodes, S. Binder and
B. Rockman (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Hay, C. and Rosamond, B. (2002) ‘Globalisation, European Integration and the
Discursive Construction of Economic Imperatives’, Journal of European Public
Policy, 9(2): 147–67.
Hebdige, D. (2002) Hiding in the Light, London: Routledge.
Heidegger, M. (1959) An Introduction to Metaphysics, New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Heidegger, M. (1962) Being and Time, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Heidegger, M. (1969) Identity and Difference, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Heidegger, M. (1977) The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays,
London: Garland.
Heidegger, M. (1982) The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press.
Heidegger, M. (1993a) ‘Letter on Humanism’, in D. Krell (ed) Basic Writings:
Martin Heidegger, 2nd ed., London: Routledge.
Heidegger, M. (1993b) ‘The Age of the World Picture’, in D. Krell (ed) Basic
Writings: Martin Heidegger, 2nd ed., London: Routledge.
Heidegger, M. (1997) Plato’s Sophist, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Held, D. and Thompson, J. (1989) Social Theory of Modern Societies, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Hirschman, A. (1982) Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action,
Oxford: Martin Robertson.
Hirst, P. (1979) On Law and Ideology, London: Macmillan.
Hobbes, T. (1949) De Cive; or, The Citizen, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Hobbes, T. (1991) Leviathan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hobsbawm, E. J. (1973) Revolutionaries: Contemporary Essays, London: Weidenfeld
and Nicholson.
Hollis, M. (2002) The Philosophy of Social Science, Revised and updated ed.,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Honig, B. (2009) Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, Politics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
 Bibliography 305

Howarth, D. (1997) ‘Complexities of Identity/Difference’, Journal of Political

Ideologies, 2(1): 51–78.
Howarth, D. (1998) ‘Paradigms Gained? A Critique of Theories of Democrati-
zation in South Africa’, in D. Howarth and A. Norval (eds) South Africa in
Transition, London: Macmillan.
Howarth, D. (2000a) Discourse, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Howarth, D. (2000b) ‘The Difficult Emergence of a Democratic Imaginary’, in
D. Howarth, A. J. Norval, and Y. Stavrakakis (eds) Discourse Theory and Political
Analysis, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Howarth, D. (2002) ‘An Archaeology of Political Discourse? Michel Foucault and
the Critique of Ideology’, Political Studies, 50(1): 117–35.
Howarth, D. (2003) ‘Archaeology, Genealogy and Hegemony: A Reply to
Mulligan’, Political Studies, 51(2): 436–40.
Howarth, D. (2004) ‘Towards a Heideggerian Social Science’, Anthropological
Theory, 4(2): 229–47.
Howarth, D. (2005) ‘Applying Discourse Theory’, in D. Howarth and J. Torfing
(eds) Discourse Theory in European Politics, London: Palgrave.
Howarth, D. (2006) ‘Space, Subjectivity and Politics’, Alternatives, 31(2): 105–34.
Howarth, D. (2008) ‘Ethos, Agonism and Populism: William Connolly and the
Case for Radical Democracy’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations,
10(2): 171–93.
Howarth, D. (2010a) ‘Discourse, Power, and Policy: Articulating a Hegemony
Approach to Critical Policy Studies’, Critical Policy Studies, 3(3–4): 309–35.
Howarth, D. (2010b) ‘Pluralizing Methods: Contingency, Ethics and Critical
Explanation’, in A. Finlayson (ed) Democracy and Pluralism: The Political Thought
of William E. Connolly, London: Routledge.
Howarth, D. (2011) ‘Reimagining Capitalism and Christianity Today: Articulating
and Negotiating Contestable Faiths in a Minor Key’, Political Theology, 12(2):
211–25.
Howarth, D., Norval, A. J., and Stavrakakis, Y. (eds) (2000) Discourse Theory and
Political Analysis, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Howarth, D. and Torfing, J. (eds) (2005) Discourse Theory in European Politics,
London: Palgrave.
Hume, D. (2000) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: A Critical Edition,
edited by Tom Beauchamp, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Husserl, E. (1965) Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, New York: Harper
and Row.
Husserl, E. (1970) The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology,
Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Husserl, E. (1977) Cartesian Meditations, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Husserl, E. (1991) Cartesian Meditations, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, E. (2001) The Shorter Logical Investigations, London: Routledge.
Inwood, M. (1997) Heidegger, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Inwood, M. (1999) A Heidegger Dictionary, Oxford: Blackwell.
Ives, P. (2004) Language and Hegemony in Gramsci, London: Pluto Press.
Jakobson, R. (1990) On Language, Cambridge: Harvard University Russian Lan-
guage Project.
Jameson, F. (1991) Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, London:
Verso.
306 Bibliography

Jameson, F. (1998) The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–
1998, London: Verso.
Jessop, B. (1982) The Capitalist State: Marxist Theories and Methods, Oxford: Martin
Robertson.
Jessop, B. (1990) State Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Jessop, B. (1996) ‘Interpretive Sociology and the Dialectic of Structure and
Agency’, Theory, Culture & Society, 13: 119–28.
Jessop, B. (1997) ‘Survey Article: The Regulation Theory’, Journal of Political
Philosophy, 5(3): 287–326.
Jessop, B. (2002a) The Future of the Capitalist State, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Jessop, B. (2002b) ‘Revisiting Thatcherism and its Political Economy: Hegemonic
Projects, Accumulation Strategies and the Question of Internationalization’, in
A. Bakkan and E. MacDonald (eds) Critical Political Studies, Montreal: McGill
University Press.
Jessop, B. (2004a) ‘Critical Semiotic Analysis and Cultural Political Economy’,
Critical Discourse Studies, 1(2): 159–74.
Jessop, B. (2004b) ‘Comments on “New Labour’s Double Shuffle” ’, Soundings, 24:
25–30.
Jessop. B. (2009) ‘Cultural Political Economy and Critical Policy Studies’, Critical
Policy Studies, 3(3–4): 336–56.
Jessop, B., Bonnett, K., Bromley, S., and Ling, S. (1988) Thatcherism: A Tale of Two
Nations, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Jessop, B. and Sum, N.-L. (2006) Beyond the Regulation Approach: Putting Capitalist
Economies in their Place, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
John, P. (1998) Analysing Public Policy, London: Pinter.
John, P. (1999) ‘Ideas and Interests; Agendas and Implementation: An Evolution-
ary Explanation of Policy Change in British Local Government Finance’, British
Journal of Politics and International Relations, 1 (1): 39–62.
Johnson, R. (2007) ‘Post-Hegemony? I Don’t Think So’, Theory, Culture, Society,
24(3): 95–110.
Jordan, G. and Maloney, W. (1997) The Protest Business? Mobilizing Campaign
Groups, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Joseph, J. (2002a) Hegemony: A Realist Analysis, London: Routledge.
Joseph, J. (2002b) ‘Five Ways in which Critical Realism can Help Marxism’, in
A. Brown, S. Fleetwood and J. M. Roberts (eds), Critical Realism and Marxism,
London: Routledge.
Joseph, J. (2006) Marxism and Social Theory, London: Palgrave.
Katzenstein, P., Keohane, R., and Krasner, S. (1988) International Organization
and the Study of World Politics’, International Organization, 52(4): 645–85.
Kelly, P. (2002) ‘Introduction: Between Culture and Equality’, in P. Kelly (ed)
Multiculturalism Reconsidered, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Keohane, R. (1984) After Hegemony, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
King, D. (1987) The New Right, London: Macmillan.
Kristeva, J. (1991) Strangers to Ourselves, New York: Columbia University Press.
Kristol, I. (2011) The Neoconservative Persuasion: Selected Essays, 1942–2009,
New York: Basic Books.
Lacan, J. (1978) The Seminar, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-
analysis, New York: W. W. Norton.
Lacan, J. (1998) The Seminar, Book XX: Encore, 1972–3, New York: W. W. Norton.
 Bibliography 307

Lacan, J. (2006) Écrits, New York: W. W. Norton.

Laclau, E. (1977) Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory, London: Verso.
Laclau, E. (1990) New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, London: Verso.
Laclau, E. (ed) (1994) The Making of Political Identities, London: Verso.
Laclau, E. (1996) Emancipation(s), London: Verso.
Laclau, E. (1999) ‘Preface’, in M. McQuillan, G. Macdonald, R. Purves,
and S. Thompson (eds) Post-Theory: New Directions in Criticism, Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Laclau, E. (2000) ‘Identity and Hegemony’, in J. Butler, E. Laclau and S. Žižek (eds)
Contingency, Hegemony, Universality, London: Verso.
Laclau, E. (2001a) ‘Can Immanence Explain Social Struggles?’, Diacritics, 31(4):
3–10.
Laclau, E. (2001b) ‘Democracy and the Question of Power’, Constellations, 8(1):
3–14.
Laclau, E. (2004) ‘Glimpsing the Future’, in S. Critchley and O. Marchart (eds)
Laclau: A Critical Reader, London: Routledge.
Laclau, E. (2005) On Populist Reason, London: Verso.
Laclau, E. (2006) ‘Why Constructing a People Is the Main Task of Radical Politics’,
Critical Inquiry, 32: 551–74.
Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, London:
Verso.
Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1987) ‘Post-Marxism without Apologies’, New Left
Review, 166: 79–106.
Laclau, E. and Zac, L. (1994) ‘Minding the Gap’, in E. Laclau (ed) The Making of
Political Identities, London: Verso.
Laplanche, J. and Pontalis, J. B. (1967) The Language of Psychoanalysis, London:
Hogarth Press.
Lash, S. (2007) ‘Power after Hegemony: Cultural Studies in Mutation?’, Theory,
Culture, and Society, 24(3): 55–78.
Latour, B. (2004) ‘Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to
Matters of Concern’, Critical Inquiry, 30(2): 225–48.
Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lawson, T. (1996) Economics and Reality, London: Routledge.
Lawson, T. (2003) Reorienting Economics, London: Routledge.
Lemke, T. (2012) Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique, Boulder, CO: Paradigm
Publishers.
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1977) Structural Anthropology: Volume Two, Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books.
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1987) Introduction to the Writings of Marcel Mauss, London:
Routledge.
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1992) Tristes Tropique, New York: Penguin Books.
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1994) The Raw and the Cooked, London: Pimlico.
Lichbach, M. (2009) ‘Social Theory and Comparative Politics’, in M. Lichbach
and A. Zuckerman (eds) Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure,
2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lilla, M. (2001) The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals and Politics, New York: New York
Review Books.
Lipietz, A. (1985) The Enchanted World, London: Verso.
308 Bibliography

Lipietz, A. (1987) Mirages and Miracles, London: Verso.

Lipietz, A. (1992) Towards a New Economic Order, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Lloyd, M. (2007) Judith Butler: From Norms to Politics, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Lukes, S. (1973) Individualism, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Lukes, S. (2005) Power, 2nd ed., Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lyotard, J.-F. (1984) The Postmodern Condition, Manchester: Manchester Univer-
sity Press.
MacIntyre, A. (1984) After Virtue, 2nd ed., London: Duckworth.
Macpherson, C. B. (1964) The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, Hobbes to
Locke, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marchart, O. (2007a) Post-Foundational Political Thought, Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Marchart, O. (2007b) ‘Acting and the Act: On Slavoj Žižek’s Political Ontology’,
in P. Bowman and R. Stamp (eds) The Truth of Žižek, London: Continuum.
Marcussen, M. and Torfing, J. (eds) (2007) Democratic Network Governance in
Europe, London: Palgrave.
Marquand, D. and Seldon, A. (eds) (1996) The Ideas that Shaped Post-War Britain,
London: Fontana.
Marx, K. (1997a) ‘The Communist Manifesto’, in D. McLellan (ed) Karl Marx:
Selected Writings, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marx, K. (1997b) ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, in D. McLellan
(ed) Karl Marx: Selected Writings, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marx, K. (1997c) ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, in D. McLellan (ed) Karl Marx: Selected
Writings, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marx, K. (1997d) ‘The Poverty of Philosophy’, in D. Mclellan (ed) Karl Marx:
Selected Writings, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marx, K. (1997e) ‘Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’, in
D. Mclellan (ed) Karl Marx: Selected Writings, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1970) The German Ideology: Part One, London: Lawrence
and Wishart.
Massumi, B. (2002) Parables for the Future: Movement, Affect, Sensation, Durham:
Duke University Press.
Mauss, M. (1990) The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies,
London: Routledge.
May, T. (1994) The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism, Pennsylvania:
Pennsylvania State University Press.
McAnulla, S. (2002) ‘Structure and Agency’, in D. Marsh and G. Stoker (eds)
Theory and Methods in Political Science, London: Palgrave.
McAnulla, S. (2006) ‘Challenging the New Interpretivist Approach’, British Poli-
tics, 1: 113–38.
McClean, I. (1987) The Theory of Choice, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
McNally, M. (2008) ‘The Organization of Balance and Equilibrium in Gramsci’s
Hegemony’, History of Political Thought, 29(4): 662–89.
McQuillan, M., MacDonald, G., Prives, R., and Thomson, R. (1999) ‘The Joy of
Theory’, in M. McQuillan, MacDonald, G., Prives, R., and Thomson, R. (eds),
Post-Theory: New Directions in Criticism, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Melucci, A. (1989) The Nomads of the Present, London: Hutchinson.
Merquior, J. (1986) From Prague to Paris: A Critique of Structuralist and Post-
Structuralist Thought, London: Verso.
 Bibliography 309

Miliband, R. (1969) The State in Capitalist Society, London: Weidenfeld and

Nicholson.
Mills, C. W. (1956) The Power Elite, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mitchell, W. J. T. (1986) Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Mitchell, T. (1991) Colonising Egypt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mitchell, T. (2002a) Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-olitics, Modernity, Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Mitchell, W. J. T. (2002b) ‘Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture’, Journal
of Visual Culture, 1(2): 165–81.
Mitchell, W. J. T. (2005) What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images,
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Mitchell, T. (2011) Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil, London:
Verso.
Monroe, K. (1997) ‘Human Nature, Identity, and the Search for a General Theory
of Politics’, in K. Monroe (ed) Contemporary Empirical Political Theory, Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
Morriss, P. (2002) Power: A Philosophical Analysis, Manchester: Manchester Uni-
versity Press.
Mouffe, C. (ed) (1979) Gramsci and Marxist Theory, London: Routledge.
Mouffe, C. (1983) ‘The Sex/Gender System and the Discursive Construction
of Women’s Subordination’, in S. Hänninen and L. Paldan (eds) Rethinking
Ideology: A Marxist Debate, New York: International General/IMMRC.
Mouffe, C. (ed) (1992) Dimensions of Radical Democracy, London: Verso.
Mouffe, C. (1993) The Return of the Political, London: Verso.
Mouffe, C. (ed) (1999) The Challenge of Carl Schmitt, London: Verso.
Mouffe, C. (2000a) The Democratic Paradox, London: Verso.
Mouffe, C. (2000b) ‘Politics and Passions: the Stakes of Democracy’, Ethical
Perspectives, 7(2–3): 146–50.
Mouffe, C. (2002) ‘Hope, Passion, Politics: A Conversation with Chantal Mouffe
and Ernesto Laclau’, in M. Zournazi (ed) Hope: New Philosophies for Change,
London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Mouffe, C. (2005) On the Political, London: Routledge.
Mouzelis, N. P. (1988) ‘Marxism or Post-Marxism?’ New Left Review, 167: 107–25.
Mouzelis, N. P. (1990) Post-Marxist Alternatives: The Construction of Social Orders,
Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Mulhall, S. (2001) Inheritance and Originality, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mulhall, S. (2005) Heidegger and ‘Being and Time’, 2nd ed., London: Routledge.
Mulhall, S. and Swift, A. (1996) Liberals and Communitarians, 2nd ed., Oxford:
Blackwell.
Nakano, Y. (2009) ‘Singularity and Ethics in Post-Development Thought: Inter-
preting Serge Latouche’s L’autre Afrique: Entre Don et Marché’, Journal of
International Relations and Development, 12: 31–57.
Nash, K. (1998) Universal Difference: Feminism and the Liberal Undecidability of
‘Women’, London: Macmillan.
Newell, P. and Paterson, M. (2010) Climate Capitalism: Global Warming and the
Transformation of the World Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Newman, S. (2005) Power and Politics in Poststructuralist Thought: New Theories of
the Political, London: Routledge.
310 Bibliography

Newman, S. (2010) The Politics of Postanarchism, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University

Press.
Nixon, S. (1996) Hard Looks: Masculinities, Spectatorship, and Contemporary Con-
sumption, London: UCL Press.
Noel, A. (1987) ‘Accumulation, Regulation, and Social Change: An Essay on
French Political Economy’, International Organization, 41(3): 303–33.
Norval, A. J. (1994a) ‘Hegemony after Deconstruction: The Consequences of
Undecidability’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 9(2): 139–57.
Norval, A. J. (1994b) ‘Social Ambiguity and the Crisis of Apartheid’, in E. Laclau
(ed) The Making of Political Identities, London: Verso.
Norval, A. J. (1996) Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse, London: Verso.
Norval, A. J. (2000a) ‘The Things we do with Words: Contemporary Approaches
to the Analysis of Ideology’, British Journal of Political Science, 30(2): 313–46.
Norval, A. J. (2000b) ‘Future Trajectories of Research in Discourse Theory:
Political Frontiers, Myths, and Imaginaries’, in D. Howarth, A. J. Norval,
and Y. Stavrakakis (eds) Discourse Theory and Political Analysis, Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
Norval, A. J. (2001) ‘The Politics of Ethnicity and Identity’, in K. Nash and A. Scott
(eds) The Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology, Oxford: Blackwell.
Norval, A. J. (2004) ‘Hegemony after Deconstruction’, Journal of Political Ideologies,
9(2): 139–57.
Norval, A. J. (2007) Aversive Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Norval, A. J. (2012) ‘ “Writing a Name in the Sky”: Rancière, Cavell, and the
Possibility of Egalitarian Inscription’, American Political Science Review, 106(4):
810–826.
Oakeshott, M. (1975) On Human Conduct, Oxford: Clarendon.
Oberschall, A. (1973) Social Conflict and Social Movement, Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
Olson, M. (1965) The Logic of Collective Action, Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
Osborne, P. (2007) ‘Neo-Classic: Alain Badiou’s Being and Event’, Radical Philoso-
phy, 142: 19–29.
Outhwaite, W. (1987) New Philosophies of Social Science, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Owen, D. (1994) Maturity and Modernity, London: Routledge.
Panizza, F. (2005) Populism and the Mirror of Democracy, London: Verso.
Parekh, B. (1999) Colonialism, Tradition and Reform, London: Sage.
Parekh, B. (2000) Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory,
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Parker, I. (1992) Discourse Dynamics, London: Routledge.
Parker, I. (2004) Qualitative Psychology: Introducing Radical Research, Buckingham:
Open University Press.
Parker, I. (2008) ‘Emotional Illiteracy: Margins of Resistance’, Qualitative Research
in Psychology, 5: 19–32.
Paterson, M. (2007) Automobile Politics: Ecology and Cultural Political Economy,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Patton, P. (2000) Deleuze and the Political, London: Routledge.
Peters, M. (2001) Poststructuralism, Marxism, and Neoliberalism, Oxford: Rowman
and Littlefield.
 Bibliography 311

Pettit, P. (1993) ‘Analytical Philosophy’, in R. E. Goodin and P. Pettit (eds)

A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell.
Pettit, P. (1996) The Common Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Polanyi, K. (1957) ‘The Economy as Instituted Process’, in K. Polanyi, C. M.
Arensberg, and H. W. Pearson (eds) Trade and Market in the Early Empire:
Economies in History and Theory, New York: Free Press, pp. 243–70.
Polanyi, K. (2001) The Great Transformation, 2nd ed., Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Popper, K. R. (1945) The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 2, London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul.
Poster, M. (1989) Critical Theory and Poststructuralism: In Search of a Context, Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press.
Poster, M. (1990) The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism and Social Context,
Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Poster, M. (1995) The Second Media Age, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Poulantzas, N. (1969) ‘The Problem of the Capitalist State’, New Left Review, 58:
67–78.
Poulantzas, N. (1973) Political Power and Social Class, London: Verso.
Poulantzas, N. (1978) State, Power, Socialism, London: New Left Books.
Rabinow, P. and Sullivan, W. (eds) (1979) Interpretive Social Science, Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Rancière, J. (1998) Disagreement, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Rawls, J. (1971) A Theory of Justice, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Rawls, J. (1996) Political Liberalism, New York: Columbia University Press.
Richardson, J. (2000) ‘Government, Interest Groups and Policy Change’, Political
Studies, 48 (5): 106–25.
Riker, W. (1986) The Art of Political Manipulation, New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Riker, W. (1996) The Strategy of Rhetoric, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Ritzer, G. and Smart, B. (eds) (2001) Handbook of Social Theory, London: Sage.
Rorty, R. (ed) (1967) The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method,
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Rorty, R. (1980) Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Rorty, R. (1989) Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
Rorty, R. (1991) Essays on Heidegger and Others, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Rosamond, B. (1999) ‘Discourses of Globalization and the Social Construction of
European Identities’, Journal of European Public Policy, 6 (4): 652–68.
Rosamond, B. (2000) Europeanization and Discourses of Globalization: Narratives of
External Structural Context in the European Commission, Centre for the Study of
Globalization and Regionalization, Working Paper 51/00.
Rose, J. (1996) States of Fantasy, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rose, G. (2007) Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual
Materials, 2nd ed., London: Sage.
Rosen, S. (1990) Hermeneutics as Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Roudinesco, E. (1990) Jacques Lacan and Co., Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.
Roudinesco, E. (2008) Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault,
Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida, New York: Columbia University Press.
312 Bibliography

Ryle, G. (1949) The Concept of Mind, London: Hutchinson.

Said, E. (1995) Orientalism, 2nd ed., Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Salvadori, M. (1979) Gramsci and the PCI: Two Conceptions of Hegemony’, in
C. Mouffe (ed) Gramsci and Marxist Theory, London: Routledge.
Saussure, F. de (1974) Course in General Linguistics, London: Fontana.
Saussure, F. de (1983) Course in General Linguistics, London: Duckworth.
Schaap, A. (2005) Political Reconciliation, London: Routledge.
Schaap, A. (ed) (2009) Law and Agonistic Politics, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing.
Schattschneider, E. (1960) The Semisovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy
in America, Austin, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Schatzki, T. (1996) Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity
and the Social, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schmitt, C. (1996) The Concept of the Political, revised ed., Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press.
Schmitter, P. (1974) ‘Still the Century of Corporatism?’, Review of Politics, 36(1):
85–131.
Schön, D. and Rein, M. (1994) Frame Reflection: Toward the Resolution of Intractable
Policy Controversies, New York: Basic Books.
Scott, J. (1988) Gender and the Politics of History, New York: Columbia University
Press.
Scott, J. (2005) Parité: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism, Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press.
Scott, J. (2007) The Politics of the Veil, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Scruton, R. (1995) Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey, Harmondsworth:
Penguin Press.
Serres, M. (1982) Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy, Baltimore, MA: The Johns
Hopkins Press.
Serres, M. and Latour, B. (1995) Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time, Ann
Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Shain, M. (1994) The Rise of Antisemitism in South Africa, Charlottesville: Univer-
sity Press of Virginia.
Shapiro, M. (1997) Violent Cartographies: Mapping Cultures of War, Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Shapiro, M. (1999) Cinematic Political Thought: Narrating Race, Nation and Gender,
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Shapiro, M. (2004) Methods and Nations, London: Routledge.
Shapiro, I. (2006) ‘On the Second Edition of Lukes’ Third Face’, Political Studies
Review, 4(2): 146–55.
Shapiro, K. (2010) Carl Schmitt and the Intensification of Politics, Oxford: Rowman
and Little.
Shepsle, K. (2003) ‘Losers in Politics (and How They Sometimes Become Winners):
William Riker’s Heresthetic’, Perspectives on Politics, 1(2): 307–15.
Simons, J. (1995) Foucault and the Political, London: Routledge.
Simons, J. (ed) (2004) Contemporary Critical Theorists: from Lacan to Said,
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Simons, J. (2010a) ‘Introduction’, in J. Simons (ed) From Agamben to Žižek:
Contemporary Critical Theorists, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Simons, J. (ed) (2010b) From Agamben to Žižek: Contemporary Critical Theorists,
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
 Bibliography 313

Skinner, Q. (1988) ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, in

J. Tully (ed.) Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics, Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Skinner, Q. (ed) (1990) The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Skinner, Q. (1996) Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Skinner, Q. (2002) Visions of Politics, Vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Skocpol, T. (1979) States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France,
Russia and China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, A. M. (1994a) New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality: Britain 1968–1990,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, A. M. (1994b) ‘Rastafari as Resistance and the Ambiguities of Essentialism
in the “New Social Movements” ’, in E. Laclau (ed) The Making of Political
Identities, London: Verso.
Smith, M. (1995a) ‘Pluralism’, in D. Marsh and G. Stoker (eds) Theories and
Methods in Political Science, London: Macmillan.
Smith, S. (1995b) ‘The Self-Images of a Discipline’, in K. Booth and S. Smith (eds)
International Relations Theory Today, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Smith, A. M. (1998) Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary, London:
Routledge.
Smith, D. W. (2003) ‘Deleuze and Derrida, Immanence and Transcendence’, in
P. Patton and J. Protevi (eds) Between Deleuze and Derrida, London: Continuum.
Sokal, A. (1996) ‘Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative
Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity’, Social Text, 46/47: 257–72.
Sokal, A. (2008) Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Sokal, A. and Brichmont, J. (2003) Intellectual Impostures, London: Profile Books.
Sorensen, E. and Torfing, J. (eds) (2006) Theories of Democratic Network Governance,
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Spinosa, C., Flores, F., and Dreyfus, H. (1997) Disclosing New Worlds, Cambridge:
MIT Press.
Spinoza, B. (1958) The Political Works, Oxford: Clarendon.
Staten, H. (1984) Wittgenstein and Derrida, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska
Press.
Stavrakakis, Y. (1999) Lacan and the Political, London: Routledge.
Stavrakakis, Y. (2007) The Lacanian Left, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Stoker, G. (2006) Why Politics Matters, London: Palgrave.
Stones, R. (1996) Sociological Reasoning, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Stones, R. (2001) ‘Refusing the Realism–Structuration Divide’, European Journal of
Social Theory, 4(2): 177–97.
Stones, R. (2005) Structuration Theory, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Stones, R. (2009) ‘Power and Structuration Theory’, in S. Clegg and M. Haugaard
(eds) The Sage Handbook of Power, London: Sage.
Strathausen, C. (2006) ‘A Critique of Neo-Left Ontology’, Postmodern Culture,
16(3).
Strathausen, C. (ed) (2009) A Leftist Ontology: Beyond Relativism and Identity
Politics, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
314 Bibliography

Tallis, R. (1995) Not Saussure: A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory, 2nd ed.,
London: Palgrave.
Tallis, R. (1997) Enemies of Hope, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Taylor, C. (1985a) Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Taylor, C. (1985b) Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Taylor, C. (1985c) ‘Connolly, Foucault, and Truth’, Political Theory, 3: 377–85.
Taylor, C. (1989) The Sources of the Self, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, C. (2004) Modern Social Imaginaries, Durham and London: Duke University
Press.
Taylor, C. (2007) A Secular Age, Harvard, MS: Belknap Press.
Texier, J. (1979) ‘Gramsci, Theoretician of the Superstructures’, in C. Mouffe (ed)
Gramsci and Marxist Theory, London: Routledge.
Thomas, P. (2011) The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism,
London: Haymarket.
Thomassen, L. (ed) (2006) The Derrida-Habermas Reader, Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Thomassen, L. (2008) Deconstructing Habermas, London: Routledge.
Thomassen, L. (2010) Habermas: A Guide for the Perplexed, London: Continuum.
Tønder, L. (2005) ‘Inessential Community: Immanence, Transcendence, Abun-
dance’, in L. Tønder and L. Thomassen (eds) Radical Democracy: Politics Between
Abundance and Lack, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Tønder, L. and Thomassen, L. (eds) (2005) Radical Democracy: Politics Between
Abundance and Lack, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Torfing, J. (1998) Politics, Regulation and the Modern Welfare State, London:
Macmillan.
Torfing, J. (1999) New Theories of Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe and Zizek, Oxford:
Blackwell.
Torfing, J. (2005) ‘Discourse Theory’, in D. Howarth and J. Torfing (eds) Discourse
Theory in European Politics, London: Palgrave.
Tormey, S. (2001) Agnes Heller: Socialism, Autonomy and the Postmodern,
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Tormey, S. (2004) Anti-Capitalism, Oxford: Oneworld.
Touraine, A. (1981) The Voice and the Eye: An Analysis of Social Movements,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Touraine, A. (1985) ‘An Introduction to the Study of Social Movements’, Social
Research, 52(4): 760–61.
Townshend, J. (2003) ‘Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: A New Paradigm
from the Essex School’, British Journal of Political Science, 5(1): 129–42.
Triantafillou, P. (2012) New Forms of Governing: A Foucauldian Inspired Analysis,
London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Trifonas, P. and Peters, M. (2004) Derrida, Deconstruction and Education: Ethics of
Pedagogy and Research, Oxford: Blackwell.
Tully, J. (1989) ‘Wittgenstein and Political Philosophy: Understanding Practices
of Critical Reflection’, Political Theory, 17(2): 172–204.
Tully, J. (1995) Strange Multiplicity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tully, J. (1999) ‘To Think and Act Differently: Foucault’s Reciprocal Objections
to Habermas’ Theory’, in S. Ashenden and D. Owen (eds) Foucault contra
Habermas, London: Sage.
 Bibliography 315

Tully, J. (2002) ‘Political Philosophy as a Critical Activity’, Political Theory, 30(4):

533–55.
Turkle, S. (1995) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, New York:
Simon and Schuster.
Valentine, J. (2007) ‘Denial, Anger and Resentment’, in P. Bowman and R. Stamp
(eds) The Truth of Žižek, London: Continuum.
Vattimo, G. (1988) The End of Modernity, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity.
Vattimo, G. (1997) Beyond Interpretation, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Visker, R. (1995) Michel Foucault, London: Verso.
Wagenaar, H. (2004) ‘ “Knowing” the Rules: Administrative Work as Practice’,
Public Administrative Review, 64(6): 643–56.
Wagenaar, H. (2011) Meaning in Action, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
Walters, W. (2002) ‘The Power of Inscription: Beyond Social Construction and
Deconstruction in European Integration Studies’, Millennium, 31(1): 83–108.
Walzer, M. (1981) ‘Philosophy and Democracy’, Political Theory, 9(3): 379–99.
Walzer, M. (1983) Spheres of Justice, Oxford: Martin Robertson.
Walzer, M. (1987) Interpretation and Social Criticism, Camridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Walzer, M. (1994) Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Ward, H. (1997) ‘Rational Choice Theory and Social Movements’, Unpublished
paper to ‘Political Studies Workshop’ at Staffordshire University.
Ward, H. (2002) ‘Rational Choice’, in D. Marsh and G. Stoker (eds) Theory and
Methods in Political Science, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Watkins, J. W. N. (1952) ‘The Principle of Methodological Individualism’, British
Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 3(2): 186–9.
Watkins, J. W. N. (1957) ‘Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences’, British
Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 8(2): 104–17.
Weale, A. (1992) The New Politics of Pollution, Manchester: Manchester University
Press.
Weale, A. (2007) Democracy, 2nd ed., London: Palgrave.
Webb, D. (2013) Foucault’s Archaeology: Science and Transformation, Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Weeks, J. (1989) Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800, 2nd
ed., London: Longman.
Wendt, A. (1997) ‘The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations The-
ory’, International Organization, 41(3): 335–70.
Wendt, A. (1999) Social Theory of International Politics, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Wenman, M. (2003a) ‘ “Agonistic Pluralism” and Three Archetypal Forms of
Politics’, Contemporary Political Theory, 2: 165–86.
Wenman, M. (2003b) ‘Laclau or Mouffe? Splitting the Difference’, Philosophy &
Social Criticism, 29: 581–606.
Wheen, F. (2005) How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, London: Fourth Estate.
Widder, N. (2002) Genealogies of Difference, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois.
Widder, N. (2012) Political Theory after Deleuze, London: Continuum.
Wight, C. (2006) Agents, Structures and International Relations: Politics as Ontology,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Williams, R. (1977) Marxism and Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Williams, J. (2000) Lyotard and the Political, London: Routledge.
316 Bibliography

Williams, J. (2005) Understanding Poststructuralism, Chesham: Acumen.

Winch, P. (1990) The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy, 2nd ed.,
London: Routledge.
Wittgenstein, L. (1967) Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Blackwell.
Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. (eds) (2001) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis,
London: Sage.
Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. (2009) ‘Critical Discourse Analysis: History, Agenda,
Theory, and Methodology’, in R. Wodak and M. Meyer (eds) Methods of Critical
Discourse Analysis, 2nd revised ed., London: Sage.
Wolfreys, J. (2000) ‘In Perspective: Pierre Bourdieu’, International Socialism Journal,
87: 1–16.
Woodiwiss, A. (1990) Social Theory After Postmodernism, London: Pluto.
Wrong, D. (1994) The Problem of Order, New York: Simon and Schuster.
Young, R. (1990) White Mythologies: Writing History and the West, London:
Routledge.
Young, I. M. (1997) ‘Unruly Categories: A Critique of Nancy Fraser’s Dual Systems
Theory’, New Left Review, 222: 147–60.
Young, I. M. (2000) Inclusion and Democracy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Young, R. (2001) Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell.
Zaretsky, E. (1994) ‘Identity Theory, Identity Politics: Psychoanalysis, Marxism,
Post-Structuralism’, in C. Calhoun (ed) Social Theory and the Politics of Identity,
New York: Basil Blackwell.
Zerilli, L. (2005) Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom, Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Žižek, S. (1989) The Sublime Object of Ideology, London: Verso.
Žižek, S. (1990) ‘Beyond Discourse Analysis’, in E. Laclau (ed) New Reflections on
the Revolution of Our Time, London: Verso.
Žižek, S. (1992) ‘Eastern Europe’s Republics of Gilead’, in C. Mouffe (ed) Dimen-
sions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community, London: Verso.
Žižek, S. (1997) ‘Multiculturalism, or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capi-
talism’, New Left Review, 225: 28–51.
Žižek, S. (1998) ‘The Seven Veils of Fantasy’, in D. Nobus (ed) Key Concepts in
Lacanian Psychoanalysis, London: Rebus.
Žižek, S. (1999) The Ticklish Subject, London: Verso.
Žižek, S. (2000a) ‘Class Struggle or Postmodernism? Yes, Please!’, in J. Butler,
E. Laclau, and S. Zizek (eds) Contingency, Hegemony and Universality: New
Discussions on the Left, London: Verso.
Žižek, S. (2000b) ‘Da Capo senza Fine’, in J. Butler, E. Laclau, and S. Zizek,
Contingency, Hegemony and Universality: New Discussions on the Left, London:
Verso.
Žižek, S. (2006) ‘Against the Populist Temptation’, Critical Inquiry, 32: 551–74.
Žižek, S. and Daly, G. (2004) Conversations with Žižek, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Index
Note: ‘n’ refer to note numbers
abstraction, 71, 88–9, 217–18
actions
agency and, 117, 119, 123, 132–4,
136–7, 139–40, 143, 145, 148
beliefs and, 3, 121, 135, 159
human, 22, 105, 117, 131, 136–7,
140, 145–7, 150, 152, 232, 258
interpretation of, 133–4
social practices and, 105, 107–8
see also practices; subjectivity
Adorno, T., 67, 71, 89, 102, 163
affect, 15, 73, 109, 111, 135, 150–85,
187, 195, 200, 224, 225
agency
and freedom, 161, 191
vs. structure, 150–85
vs. subjectivity, 151–2, 155–62,
164–5, 169–72, 174, 181, 182–5
agents
human vs. non-human, 11, 135,
157
social, 108, 116, 118, 120–1, 127,
143, 147, 155, 161, 182, 192,
196, 211, 220, 235, 246, 248–9,
252, 272
Aglietta, M., 22, 208–9, 212, 213, 216
agonism, 166
agonistic respect, 179
airports, 114, 201, 218
alienation, 175
Althusser, L., 9, 13, 15, 85–6, 109,
112–13, 123–7, 143, 169, 194, 227
ideology, 15, 125, 169
interpellation, 126, 169
overdetermination, 124, 126
regional theory of society, 127, 144
social formation, 124–6
subject, 9, 126, 169, 227
subjectivity, 15, 125–6, 169, 224
totality, 125
317
Alvesson, M., 18
Andersen, N. A., 18
Anderson, P., 69–70
antagonism, 62, 71, 113, 122, 154,
166–7, 175–6, 199, 205, 207, 217,
219, 230, 238, 243, 271–2
see also conflict; contestation;
struggle
anti-essentialist, 55, 70, 74, 79, 272
anti-humanist, 62, 126
apartheid, 180, 208, 242, 260
application problem, 214
applying a rule, 214–15
see also rule-following, rules
archaeology of discourse, 159–60
Archaeology of Knowledge, The
(Foucault), 13, 159, 227
Archer, M., 137–8
arche-writing, 41, 44
Arendt, H., 183, 252
Aristotle, 65, 94
articulation
of critical theory, 102
between democracy and liberalism,
82–3
of language, 29, 42, 259–60
in ontological concept, 89–91, 266
passionate attachments, 179
of regulation theory, 217–18, 220
of social formations, 193, 196
articulatory practice, 155, 181, 213,
217, 258
see also mechanisms; practices
Ashenden, S., 113
Ashley, R., 78
aspectival, 242
attachment, 167–73, 176–80, 203,
208, 236
attentiveness, 61, 205
see also ethics
318 Index

Austin, J. L., 103, 106 bio-power, 193, 212

aviation, 201, 218 Bird, C., 135
Black Consciousness Movement
Bachrach, P., 201 (South Africa), 242, 251, 260
background conditions, 3, 12, 69, 198, Blaikie, N., 92
205, 236, 242, 270, 275 Blyth, M., 255–6
Badiou, A., 19–20, 81, 175, 229 Bobbio, N., 194, 196
Balibar, E., 86, 113, 123–5, 127, 227 body
Baratz, S. M., 201 brain system and, 111, 117, 172
Barker, J., 81 habits, 33
Barnett, C., 17 human, 33, 111
Barry, B., 233, 236 poststructuralist theorizing on,
Barthes, R., 9, 13–14, 18, 24, 28, 38, 164–5
74, 85, 163 of thought, 2, 20, 274
Beasley-Murray, J., 20, 194–5, 274–5 and tools, 107
behaviour Boggs, C., 13, 231
mass, 216–17 Böhm, S., 18
rule-governed, 92, 142, 214 Boudon, R., 151
behaviouralism, 200 Bourbaki, N., 280 n2
Being, 11–12, 89, 96–101, 239–40, 270 Bourdieu, P., 106–8, 139
see also beings; entities; ontology Bové, P., 265
Being and Time (Heidegger), 98, 100 Boyer, R., 22–3, 208, 213, 216, 218,
being-in-the-world, 100 221
beings, 11–12, 94, 96, 101, 118, 145, bracketing, 47, 131
239–40, 269, 270 Bradshaw, A., 204
beliefs Brichmont, J., 281 n1
actions and, 3, 121, 135, 159 Brittan, S., 133
distorted, 72, 103–4 Brown, A., 145–6
false, 43, 57, 67, 89, 148, 162, 189, Brown, W., 167–9, 172
197, 204–5, 244, 260 Bulfinch, T., 30
first-order, 262 Burman, E., 18
interpretation of, 113–14 Butler, J., 15, 19, 28, 69, 75, 82–3,
societal, 219, 221 169–72, 180, 234, 242
Bell, D., 281 n3 Byrne, P., 144, 249
Belsey, C., 5, 18
Benhabib, S., 69, 234 Calhoun, C., 236
Bennett, J., 19, 76, 93, 108, 109, 156–8 Callinicos, A., 70, 125
Bentham, J., 128, 130 Campbell, D., 233
Benton, T., 70, 97, 125–6, 204 capital accumulation, 209, 215, 231
Benveniste, E., 39 capitalism, 15, 17, 20, 62, 72, 75, 81,
Bernet, R., 45 103, 112, 120, 167–8, 173, 198,
Bertramsen, R. B., 209, 212, 213 209, 215–16, 218, 222, 230
Bevir, M., 2–3, 128, 159–60, 226 capitalist societies, 23, 144, 172, 195,
Bhaskar, R., 70, 90–2, 94, 117, 119, 208, 221–2, 231
140–8, 150, 157–8, 160, 182, 210 Carpentier, N., 17
see also causal mechanisms; critical Carrabine, E., 278 n4
realism; intransitive objects Carver, T., 277 n2, 278–9 n4
binary oppositions, 41, 58, 112, 154, Castells, M., 1, 23, 86, 231–2, 237–8
182, 254 causal explanation, 70, 148, 233

causality
ideals and language of, 38–44
mechanical, 91, 93, 119, 141–2, 145,
257–8, 261
causal laws, 117, 183
causal mechanisms, 91, 93, 119,
141–2, 145, 257–8, 261
Caute, D., 13
Cavell, S., 83
Chambers, S., 17, 171
change
political, 121–2, 151, 176, 196,
254–6, 275
of practices, 261
of regimes, 254, 275
social, 3, 20, 55, 81, 90, 92, 116,
118, 120, 123–5, 139, 146–8,
154–5, 162, 169, 176, 196,
220, 223, 231–2, 238, 255–9,
261, 271
chess, example of, 26, 270
Chinese revolution, 8
Chong, D., 233, 249
Chouliaraki, L., 79, 188
civil society, 143–4, 195–8, 220, 222,
229, 237
see also Gramsci; state
Clarke, J., 188
class relations, 195
class struggle(s), 81, 122–3, 229, 231
Clegg, S., 155
closed systems, 112, 142, 226
closure
determinism, 171
essentialist, 196
Clough, P., 164–5
coalition, 84, 134, 179, 199–202, 207,
220, 251, 271, 275
coercion, 196–8, 203, 213
Cohen, G. A., 123
Coles, R., 181
collective action, 133–4, 247, 249,
255–6
collective actors, 237
collective mobilization, 134
communication model, 53
communism, 81, 122, 194
comparing, 27, 91
competition, 216–17, 222
Index 319
complexity theory, 108, 111–12, 156,
172, 181
complicity, 68, 78, 203
concealment, 61, 63, 73, 99, 205, 207,
218, 220, 239, 242, 247, 274
condensation, 124, 143
see also displacement;
overdetermination
conditions
of existence, 126, 136, 184–5
of impossibility, 4–5, 32, 50, 55, 73,
79, 146, 153, 161, 205, 245,
247, 273
of possibility, 45, 50, 98, 141
conflict, 103–4, 118, 120–1, 123–4,
126, 144, 166, 191, 200–2, 221,
231–2, 235, 242
see also antagonism; contestation;
struggle
Connolly, W. E., 11, 17, 19, 61, 76,
78–9, 82, 83, 87, 108, 110–12,
117, 156–7, 172–4, 178–81, 221,
229–30, 234–6, 240, 244, 262–3,
268
consent, 81, 129, 196–8, 203, 229, 275
constitutive outside, 11, 153–4, 270
contestation, 13, 57, 104, 113, 146,
176, 186, 201, 205, 214, 219–20,
243, 245, 271
see also antagonism; conflict;
struggle
contextualization, 13, 82
contingency
vs. necessity, 154, 208
radical, 70, 79, 83–4, 119, 185,
187–8, 205, 208, 220, 223,
245, 247, 258, 261, 267, 269,
271, 274
continuity, 54, 57, 60, 168, 229, 291
Coole, D., 76, 108–10, 157
Copjec, J., 15, 19, 73, 80, 171, 174,
177
covering over, 247
Coward, R., 28
Cox, R., 194
Craib, I., 70, 97
Critchley, S., 78–9, 89, 99, 177, 267
320 Index

critical explanation Dean, M., 222

of agency, 155 decisions
of banking, 116–17 identifications, 183
of discourse theory, 212 kinds of, 185, 272–3
logic of, 261 policy, 256
of normative proposals, 82, 266 political, 183
poststructuralism, 62, 64, 77, 179, revolutionary situations, 185, 272–3
268 within a structure vs. over a
of power, 274–5 structure, 185, 272
of regulation theory, 219 deconstruction, 5, 11, 54, 59, 64–6,
of social life, 134, 178, 180–1 70–1, 73, 77, 81, 110, 150, 152,
of socio-economic structure, 22 174, 202, 224, 263
critical realism see also Derrida
agency-centered perspectives of, deconstructive reading, 21, 24, 38–44,
117, 119, 140–4, 147–8, 157 53, 154, 195, 241
conception of hegemony, 275 deduction, 37, 98, 142
ontological assumptions, 90, 92, de Goede, M., 17
182 Deleuze, G., 4, 11, 13–15, 17, 19, 57,
poststructuralism, 3, 158, 223, 266, 73, 76, 79–80, 85, 90, 109, 112,
268 156, 165, 172–3, 221, 267–8, 271
critical theorists, 56, 102, 132, 223, demands, 81–3, 110, 113, 143–4,
234–5, 240 163–4, 190, 199–204, 207, 214,
critical theory, 3, 16, 56, 71, 76, 90, 228–31, 242–3, 251, 258, 263, 271
102–3, 109, 113, 148, 262, 265–6, democracy
268, 278 agonistic, 179
critique deliberative, 69, 83, 104, 179
deconstructive, 54, 64–6, 70, 73, 77, representative, 86
174, 224 Der Derian J., 77
ethical, 82 Derrida, J., 3, 5, 7, 9, 11–15, 17–21, 24,
explanatory, 22, 62, 64, 77, 82, 28, 38–44, 49–54, 57–8, 65–6, 68,
116–17, 155, 178–81, 212, 261, 70–4, 77, 79, 83, 85, 87, 90, 102,
268, 274–5 105, 125–6, 146, 152–4, 167,
immanent, 25, 64, 108, 110–11, 182–3, 202, 214, 227, 241, 243,
122, 153, 172–3, 193, 223 258–60, 270–1
normative, 15–16, 102 binary oppositions, 41, 58, 112,
Crossley, N., 231 154, 182, 254
Culler, J., 52 deconstruction, 81
Cutler, A., 126 deconstructive reading, 21, 24, 38,
41, 53, 154, 195, 241
Dahlberg, L., 17 différance, 14, 50–3, 241, 271
Dahl, R., 200 infrastructures, 50, 64, 182, 185
Daly, G., 81 iterability, 50, 53–4, 214, 271
Dasein, 96–100, 105 poststructuralism and, 2, 16, 20, 69,
data analysis, 88 81–3, 104, 167, 176–9, 195,
Davidson, D., 38, 74 240, 260
Davies, J., 70, 275 the sign, 13, 25–7, 39–40, 42–3,
Dawkins, R., 281 n2 49–51, 73, 85, 109
Day, R., 195 structuralism and, 2, 69
Dean, J., 19, 80, 242 trace, 50–1, 54, 171

Descartes, R., 46, 109, 259
Descombes, V., 280 n2
descriptivism, 2, 33, 58, 177, 190, 230
desires, 1, 28, 113, 118, 130–1, 135,
147, 158–9, 204, 206–7, 249, 257
determinism
economic, 85, 194, 209
mechanical, 110, 172
Devenney, M., 277 n3
Dews, P., 71
difference
concept of, 52–3, 241
linguistic, 80, 180
logics of, 221, 271
ontological, 12, 88, 95, 97, 100–1,
240, 270
system of, 27, 39, 42–3, 53, 271
see also equivalence, logics of;
identity; Laclau; logics
différance, 14, 50–3, 241, 271
dimensions of social reality, 136, 151
Disch, L., 171
disciplinary power, 80, 193
discontinuity, 54, 57, 60
discourse
analysis, 4, 14, 18, 109, 111, 189,
258
apartheid, 180, 208, 242, 260
coalition, 84, 134, 179, 199–202,
207, 220, 251, 271, 275
Derrida and, 5, 7, 11, 17–21, 28, 44,
49, 57–8, 66, 70–4, 79, 183, 202,
241, 243, 258–60, 271
Foucault and, 159–60
Laclau and Mouffe and, 181–2
meaningful behaviour, 74, 93, 102,
111, 114, 182, 271
meanings, 53–4, 114–15, 180, 193–4
nationalist, 207, 228, 231, 235,
237–8
populist, 82, 177–8
sexuality, 15, 168, 171, 191, 212,
234
discourse theory, 5, 18, 43, 180, 192–3,
203, 209, 212, 215, 251, 261
discursive
extra–, 70, 84, 180, 226, 254
forms, 10, 94, 189, 214, 227, 261,
269
Index 321
practices, 159, 175, 181, 189, 190,
254
structure, 158, 181, 184, 193, 252,
271
discursive articulation, 105, 166
disequilibrium, 198
dislocation
dislocatory event, 161–2, 177, 183,
192, 204, 250
dislocatory experience, 246, 264
dislocatory moment, 177, 183, 218
displacement, 124, 199, 263
see also condensation;
overdetermination
distorted beliefs, 72, 103–4
domination
freedom and, 191
ideology, 188–9, 193, 197–9, 204,
207–8, 220–1
power and, 22, 64, 80, 187–224,
225, 237, 274
Dosse, F., 1, 24
double reading, 241
Dowding, K., 134
Dreyfus H., 100, 107, 189, 190
duality of social structure and human
agency, 8, 136–7, 143, 235
Ducrot, O., 277 n1
Dummett, M., 279–80 n1
Dunleavy, P., 233, 248–50, 252
Eagleton, T., 58, 265
ecology, 111
economism, 123, 197, 219
economy, 1, 16–17, 63–4, 75–6,
109–10, 120, 130, 206, 208, 212,
214, 222–4, 243, 258, 263
see also Marx, base and
superstructure; determinism;
economism; materialism;
materialist ontology;
Production; regime of
accumulation
elements
differences, 193, 243
floating signifiers, 193, 213, 243,
261
vs. moments, 10–11
nodal points, 193, 243
322 Index

Elliott, G., 285.n5 ethicopolitical interpretation, 176

Ellis, J., 28 ethics, 2, 15, 77, 82, 88, 102–4, 113,
Elster, J., 123, 132 173, 176, 178, 240
emancipation ethos, 2, 6, 7, 12, 15, 20, 59, 74, 80,
human, 69, 103, 132, 148 160, 173–4, 176, 179, 240, 267,
social, 194–6 269
emotions, 111, 158, 164–5, 169, 172, evangelical-capitalist resonance
179–80, 182 machine, 179
empirical testing, 142 evidence, generation of, 42, 154, 181,
see also testing; theory testing 189, 247
empty signifiers, 84, 202, 243, 250–1, evolutionary theory, 123
261 exhaustiveness, 10, 39, 86, 107, 114,
see also floating signifiers 142, 154, 182
endogenous identity sets, 248, 252 exogenous identity sets, 248, 252
Engels, F., 122, 254, 279 n4 experience
enjoyment, 164–5, 174–6, 178, 180–2, actions and, 142
203–7, 245, 247 artistic, 66
Enlightenment ideals, 68 bodily, 165
entities, 18, 26, 40, 43, 61, 90, 93–100, collective, 244
118, 131, 145, 152, 154–5, 157, of crisis and disruption, 272
182, 221, 240, 252, 261, 271–2 dislocatory, 163, 183, 204, 246, 264
environment, 102–3, 107, 117, 130 empirical, 141
environmental mechanisms, 110, 134,
individual’s, 45
228, 231, 235, 250, 253
of otherness, 242
epistemic fallacy, 94, 142
postmodernist, 72
epistemic gain, 267
psychoanalytical perspectives, 174
epistemological indeterminacy, 184
of social agents, 121
epistemology, 90–1, 118, 130, 204, 255
subjective, 107
epoché, 47
temporal, 51
see also phenomenological
reduction time-space frames, 238
equality, 81, 83, 104, 166, 179, 262–3 explanandum, 218
equilibrium explanans, 218
general, 213 explanation
static, 213 causal, 70, 148, 233
equivalence, logics of, 200 critical, 22, 62, 64, 77, 82, 116–17,
see also difference; Laclau; Mouffe; 155, 178–81, 212, 261, 268,
logics 274–5
Escobar, A., 279 n4 form of, 131
essence, 10, 12, 18, 46–8, 50–2, 61, 79, functional, 123
95–7, 101, 109, 112, 124–5, 146, vs. hypothesis, 212
153–4, 161, 211–12, 232, 242, 269 intentional, 119, 123, 131
essentialism, 3, 10, 13, 39, 64, 84, 131, justification of, 77, 105
135, 194, 214, 219, 241, 280 key approaches to, 118–19, 127–31,
see also anti-essentialist; closure; 189, 195
fixity; identity; totality law-like, 110, 118–19, 157, 172, 233
ethical critique, 82 logics of, 219, 261
see also critique; normative critique mode of, 262
ethical dimension, 157, 177, 244 vs. prediction, 209

positivist view of, 85, 88, 90, 101,
106, 142, 156, 233, 255–6, 258
through contextualization, 13, 82
explanatory analysis, 12, 57, 70, 106,
112, 118–19, 133, 142, 148, 175,
218, 226–7, 230–1, 234, 239, 269,
275
explanatory concepts, 119
explanatory critique, 148
Fairclough, N., 79, 188, 189
false consciousness, 162, 197,
204
family resemblance, 107, 109,
200
fantasmatic logics, 220, 247
fantasy
beatific, 206
horrific, 206
Farr, J., 6
Femia, J., 194
Ferguson, J., 17, 130
Finlayson A., 18
Fischer, F., 164
fixity, 10, 11, 28, 72, 79, 153, 226,
241, 261
Fleetwood, S., 147
floating signifiers, 193, 213, 243, 261
see also empty signifiers
Flyvbjerg, B., 113
force, 35, 37, 68, 69, 103, 129, 156,
157, 168, 169, 175–7, 190, 196,
198, 199, 206, 235
Fordism, 217
formalization, 37
form of explanation, 256–7
Foucault, M., 3–5, 7, 9, 12–15, 17, 19,
33, 57–9, 65–8, 70–4, 77, 79–80,
85, 87, 90, 101, 105, 108, 109,
112, 156, 159, 167, 169, 171–3,
182, 187–93, 203–4, 212, 222–4,
227, 243, 250, 270–1, 273
archaeology of discourse and
science, 13, 33, 101, 159, 227
bio-power, 193, 212
discourse, 159–60
episteme, 101, 108
formation rules, 33–8
genealogy, 98, 259, 260
Index 323
power, 188–93
problematization, 1, 4, 7, 13, 21, 56,
76, 85, 150, 211, 212
statements, 40, 78, 88, 103, 159,
189, 227, 260
subject positions, 162, 184, 245,
246, 250, 272
Foweraker, J., 231
Frankfurt School, 56, 71
Fraser, N., 69, 234, 242, 262–3
freedom, 191–2
Freeman, R., 107
French Regulation Theory, 17, 109,
188, 208, 209, 213, 223
French revolution, 8
Freud, S., 14, 19, 28, 39, 73, 124,
126, 161, 165, 170, 174,
245
Friedman, M., 263
functional explanation, 123
Frost, S., 76, 108–10, 157
Fuller, S., 88–9
Furlong, P. J., 207
Gadamer, H.-G., 65
Gadet, F., 24
Gallie, W. B., 151
game theory, 128, 130, 135
genealogy, 98, 259, 260
generalizations, 88, 118, 119
Geras, N., 15, 70, 84, 125, 229,
230
Gibson-Graham, J. K., 17
Giddens, A., 2, 8, 90, 92–4, 106, 117,
119, 136–40, 143, 150, 155, 160,
182, 184, 238, 265, 269
Gilbert, J., 20, 165
Gilroy, P., 278 n4
Glynos, J., 18, 65, 85, 93, 96, 106,
114–15, 160, 162, 180, 204–6,
247, 261, 262
God, 11, 63, 96, 156, 183–4,
239–40
Gofas, A., 256–7
Goldstein, P., 81
Gottweis, H., 18
governmentality, 15, 16, 23, 109, 188,
191, 203, 208, 222–4
grammatology, 24, 39, 44, 50
324 Index

Gramsci, A., 15, 23, 74, 123, 143, Heidegger, M., 3, 12, 14, 39, 64–5,
177, 187–8, 193–9, 202, 213, 67–8, 77, 87, 89–90, 94–101, 105,
219–22, 224 129–30, 161, 164, 182–3, 239–40,
fundamental social class, 195, 246, 270
197 Held, D., 137
hegemony, 193–208 hermeneutics, 1, 36, 56, 57, 92, 99,
historical bloc, 194, 196, 197, 198, 105, 108, 111
214 hermeneutics of facticity, 99
integral state, 197, 219 Hirschman, A., 249, 255
organic intellectuals, 195, 198 Hirst, P., 169
state and civil society, 197 historical bloc, 194, 196, 197, 198, 214
Grant, R., 281 n3 History of Sexuality, The (Foucault),
Griggs, S., 180, 205, 218, 248, 251, 191, 212
256, 258, 262 Hjelmslev, L., 9, 13, 44, 270
Grove, J., 288 n1 Hobbes, T., 109, 127–9, 135
Guattari, F., 13, 15, 76, 80, 109, 112, Hobsbawm, E. J., 254
172, 221 Honig, B., 82
Honneth, A., 69
Habermas, J., 66–9, 71–3, 77, 79, 90, Horkheimer, M., 67, 71, 102, 163
102–6, 113, 117, 163, 179, 204, human action, 22, 105, 117, 131,
231, 236, 265 136–7, 140, 145–7, 150, 152, 232,
Hacking, I., 6, 267 258
Hajer, M., 17, 189 human subjectivity, 1, 7, 12, 14, 19,
Hall S., 16–17 22, 43, 46, 102, 125, 130, 147,
Hammond, M., 47, 99 151, 155, 158, 164, 165, 172, 183,
Hardin, R., 286 n9 195, 223–4
Hardt, M., 164, 172, 195 Hume, D., 128, 164
Harsanyi, J. C., 132 Husserl, E., 21, 44–9, 64, 99, 161, 259
Harvey, N., 278 double bracketing, 47
Hassan, I., 58 epoché, 47
Hay, C., 70, 84, 91, 143, 204, experience, 45–8
256–7 phenomenology, 45–8
Hebdige, D., 58 reactivation vs. sedimentation, 49
Hegel, G.W.F., 59, 72–3, 112, transcendental subjectivity, 49, 74
259 hypotheses
hegemonic, 200, 201, 213, 218, vs. explanation, 212
221, 266 falsification of, 88
hegemonic orders and practices, generation of, 239
185–6, 188, 193–208, 213, positing and accepting, 240
218–20, 243, 258
hegemonic project, 82, 198–9, 202, idealism, 46, 70, 84, 91–2, 175
214–15, 230, 252 ideals, 61, 68, 77, 81, 83–4, 104, 118,
hegemony, 193–208 177–8, 196, 198, 206, 260, 274
see also Gramsci, hegemonic; ideas
hegemonic orders and practices; vs. interests, 103
hegemonic project; Laclau; role of, 253–4
Mouffe as signifiers, 25–7, 40
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (Laclau ideational turn, 3, 91, 151, 254, 256,
and Mouffe), 15, 79, 81, 82 260
 Index 325

identification, 16, 82, 83, 126, 159, interpellation, 1, 26, 82, 169, 172,
161–3, 167, 171–2, 174, 176, 174, 251
179–81, 183–5, 188, 192, 203–4, interpretation
206, 220, 223, 227, 229, 235, 237, of actions, 133–4
243–7, 250–1, 264, 272–3, 275 of beliefs, 113–14
identity, 225–64 of emotions, 164–5
see also difference; essence; ethicopolitical, 176
identification; subjectivity of reality, 92
identity-identification dialectic, 246–7 of self-interpretations, 106, 114,
ideological dimension, 212, 220 212, 261
ideology, 2, 7, 15, 20, 61, 64, 72, 75–7, validity of, 45, 66, 103, 104
81, 90, 115, 125, 144, 146, 159, interpretivism, 128
166, 169, 174, 186, 188–9, 193, intervention, 13, 15, 22, 60, 66, 87,
197–9, 204, 207–8, 220–1, 247, 110, 133, 140, 143–4, 155, 178,
271–5 180, 182, 198, 200, 204, 217,
imaginary, 12, 48, 159, 165–6, 174, 220–2, 225, 229, 256–7, 271
245–6 intransitive objects, 211
immanence, 1, 2, 4, 7, 11, 19, 45, 76, intransitivity, 211
87, 110, 153, 269 Inwood, M., 95–6
immanent critique, 25, 64, 108, iterability, 50, 53, 54, 214, 271
110–11, 122, 153, 172–3, 193, 223 Ives, P., 197
impossibility, 2, 4, 32, 47, 50, 55, 73,
79, 146, 153, 161, 205, 245, 273 Jakobson, R., 9, 24, 37
incomplete Jameson, F., 71–2
order, 10, 55, 152 Jessop, B., 70, 79, 84, 109, 133, 137–8,
structure, 5, 52, 55, 63, 74, 118, 182, 143–4, 209–10, 213, 216–17, 221
242, 271–2 John, P., 256
subject, 85, 161, 246 Johnson, R., 20, 275
see also lack, ontology of; void Jordan, G., 292 n5
indeterminacy, 184 Joseph, J., 70, 144, 147, 179, 194, 275
indeterminate effects, 36, 43, 138, judgement, 66, 78, 171, 172, 181
164, 208, 213, 243, 251 justification, 77, 105
individualism, 119, 131 justifying, 260
individualization, 290 n8
individual viewpoints, 8, 133, 251 Kant, I., 46, 94–5, 119, 127–8, 130,
industrialization, 250 141, 156, 157, 173
inequality, 263 Katzenstein, P., 70
inner mental processes, 100 Kelly, P., 233
instituted processes, 209 Keohane, R., 194
institutionalization, 134, 203 Keynes, J. M. 253–4
instrumental reason, 103 Keynesian, 287 n14
intentional explanation, 119, 123, 131 Keynesianism, 263
intentionality, 45, 99, 156 King, D., 133
intentional mechanisms, 1, 31, 45, knowledge, 5, 9, 32, 34, 36, 44–5, 47,
119, 123, 147, 157 49, 67–8, 75, 88, 90–4, 101–4,
interests, 225–64 117–18, 125, 138–9, 141–3, 147,
see also identity; ideas; preferences; 154, 159, 189–91, 203, 222
recognition; redistribution Kristeva, J., 14, 18, 21, 28, 58, 74, 85
international regimes, 17, 77 Kristol, I., 281 n3
326 Index
labour process model, 215
Lacanian theory, 83, 175, 245
Lacan, J., 12, 14–15, 17, 19, 28, 57–8,
68, 72–3, 85, 93, 152, 161, 175,
177, 182, 246, 270–1
see also fantasy; ontology of lack;
subject; subjectivity; Žižek
lack, ontology of, 19
see also dislocation, void
Laclau E., 3, 5, 7, 10, 15–17, 19–20, 28,
70, 72–5, 79, 81–3, 90, 94, 106,
113, 115, 154–5, 159–64, 176–8,
180–5, 188, 193, 196, 199, 202,
203, 218–19, 224, 229–31, 243,
246, 250–1, 253, 258–9, 261, 265,
272
see also difference; equivalence;
hegemony; political logics;
populism
language
closed system of signs, 226
games, 74
langue vs. parole, 29
linguistics, 6, 14, 16, 24–5, 37–8, 44,
69
of logics, 36
phrases, 27, 235, 259
referential vs. relational theory of,
27
sentences, 27–9, 43, 112, 259, 270
statements, 40, 78, 88, 103, 159,
189, 227, 260
theory of, 21, 29, 43
see also communication model;
discourse; discursive; Saussure;
Wittgenstein
Laplanche, J., 245
Lash, S., 20, 274–5
Latour, B., 109, 157, 265
law-like explanation, 110, 157, 172
laws
eternal, 63
of historical development, 209
natural, 63
scientific, 45
symbolic, 33–4
Lawson, T., 283 n3
Lemke, T., 222
Lévi-Strauss, C., 153, 270
Lichbach, M., 131
Lilla, M., 281 n4
linguistic model, 9, 112
linguistics, 6, 14, 16, 24–5, 37, 38, 44,
69
Lipietz, A., 22, 208–13, 215–17, 221
Lloyd, M., 169–71
logics
of capital accumulation, 209, 215,
231
vs. causal mechanisms, 93, 119,
142, 145, 261
of collective action, 133–4, 247,
249, 255–6
concept of, 20–3
of contingency, 63, 168, 210
of critical explanation, 261
of difference, 221, 271
of equivalence, 200
of explanation, 219, 261
fantasmatic, 220, 247
of necessity, 154, 208
political, 208–9, 244, 253
social, 208
types of, 238–9
Lukes, S., 200, 204, 274
Lyotard, J.-F., 71–3, 90, 105–6, 268
MacIntyre, A., 3, 60, 65, 235
Macpherson, C. B., 127
Maloney, W., 292 n5
Marchart, O., 20
Marcussen, M., 278 n4
Marquand, D., 254
Martin, J., 278 n4
Marxism, 3, 5, 14, 56, 59, 62–4, 69, 71,
74, 81, 83, 85, 112, 117, 119, 123,
125, 127, 176, 194, 197, 226, 266,
268, 275
Marx, K., 11, 62–3, 72, 116, 120–4,
167, 195–6, 210–11, 254
base and superstructure, 120–4
class struggle, 122–3
forces and relations of production,
63, 120–4, 196
laws of history, 168
mode of production, 63, 120
Massumi, B., 172

materialism, 10–12, 69, 91, 93,
109–10, 125, 157–8, 193, 211, 269
materialist ontology, 93
materialist theory of ideology, 123,
124, 181
mathematical methods, 19, 32, 37
matter, 2, 26, 39, 54, 59, 74, 84, 101–2,
108–11, 122, 128–9, 161, 194,
210, 214, 226, 232, 252, 254, 273
Mauss, M., 33, 35, 37
maximum variation cases, 48, 73, 114,
133, 152
Maybin, J., 107
May, T., 79
McAnulla, S., 79
McClean, I., 132
McNally, M., 197
McQuillan, M., 265
meaningful behaviour, 74, 93, 102,
111, 114, 182, 271
meaning(s), 2, 3, 10, 12, 22, 40, 42–3,
47, 52, 55, 72, 93, 97, 102, 105–7,
112–15, 139, 158–9, 163, 193,
199, 214, 231, 237, 241, 243, 251,
258, 260, 271
mechanisms
causal mechanisms, 91, 93, 119,
141–2, 145, 257–8, 261
critical realism, 3, 90, 92, 117, 119,
140–4, 147–8, 157–8, 182, 223,
266, 268, 275
intentional, 1, 31, 45, 119, 123, 147,
157
mechanistic explanations, 118
Melucci, A., 231, 292 n8
Merquior, J., 57
metaphor, 57, 66, 72–3, 113, 162–3,
202
methodological
deficit, 68, 84–5
individualism, 119, 131
pluralism, 173
methodology, 18, 28, 90–1, 113, 268
metonymy, 72
Meyer M., 189
Miliband, R., 133, 144
Mill, J. S., 128, 130
Mills, C. W., 289 n3
Mitchell, T., 16, 75–6, 260–1
Index 327
Mitchell, W. J. T., 18, 109, 236
mode of development, 217
mode of regulation, 213, 215–17, 221
modes of inquiry, 88
mode of societalization, 221
moments
differences, 51
vs. elements, 193, 243
empty signifiers, 84, 202, 243,
250–1, 261
floating signifiers, 193, 213, 243,
261
nodal points, 193, 243
system, 51, 121, 187
Monroe, K., 292 n7
morality, 60, 103, 119, 173, 206, 258
moral progress, 35–6
moral relativism, 70, 204, 267
moral theory, 178
Morriss, P., 274
motivation, sources of, 249
Mouffe, C., 10, 17, 19–20, 28, 70,
72–3, 75, 79, 81–2, 94, 106, 113,
154, 165–7, 172, 179–82, 188,
193, 196, 203, 218–19, 224, 229,
231, 242–3, 250, 253, 258
see also difference; equivalence;
hegemony; political logics
Mouzelis, N. P., 15, 188
Mulhall, S., 96–8, 135
multiculturalism, 81, 228, 230
myth
definition, 29–30
social imaginary and, 165–6
surface of inscription and, 164
mythemes, 29–31
Nakano, Y., 279 n4
naming, 6, 20, 59, 64
narrative, 18, 30–1, 61, 78, 103, 168,
180, 182, 201, 206–7, 256–7
narrative form of explanation, 256–7
Nash K., 277 n3, 278 n4
national identity, 174
nationalism, 165, 174–5, 180–1, 207,
230
National Party (South Africa), 207
naturalism, 13, 19, 64, 92, 110, 158,
172–3, 223
328 Index

naturalist philosophy, 70–1, 76, 129, ontological presuppositions, 6–7, 88,

165, 172, 180, 254 91, 138, 193, 270
naturalization, 63–4 ontology
natural science, 44, 108, 109, 121, 142 commitment to, 11, 87, 135, 145,
negative ontology, 175 195
negativity, 5, 10, 14, 62, 113, 115, concept of, 21, 87, 89–91, 94–8, 145
126, 154, 175–6, 223, 271 of lack, 87, 89
negotiation, 175, 237 materialist, 93
Negri, A., 172, 195 negative, 175
neoliberalism, 15, 111–12, 220, 222 of the political, 91, 117–18, 134–5,
neuroscience, 108, 111, 172, 181 182–3
Newell, P., 17 positivism and, 88, 92, 94
New Labour (UK), 166, 241 poststructuralist, 22
Newman, S., 79 signifying, 159
new materialism, 109–10, 115, 157 of the social, 10, 21–2, 55, 79,
New Right, 133, 166, 241, 258 101–2, 115, 266
Nicholson L., 242 of structures, 92, 120–2
Nietzsche, F., 1, 14, 39, 56, 65, 67–8, turn to, 21, 87–91, 94, 141, 261
72, 77, 79, 90, 105, 109, 164–5, open systems, 111, 141
167, 169, 172–3 oppression, 22, 80, 81, 165, 177,
nihilism, 44, 78 207–8, 237, 241, 260
Nixon, S., 278 n4 organic crisis, 258
Noel, A., 216, 221 Orientalism, 242, 243
normative critique, 148, 233 Osborne, P., 5, 265
normative deficit, 176–7 Other, 113, 243, 271–2
normativism, 66, 113 Otherness, 2, 14, 30, 154, 227, 235,
norms, 4, 57, 69, 77, 104–5, 114, 132, 239, 242, 244
169–71, 179, 214–15, 219, 221, Outhwaite, W., 141, 156, 210
237, 256 overdetermination, 124, 126
Norval A. J., 82–3, 162, 236 Owen D., 113, 179
novel ideas, 258
paradiastole, 201
Oakeshott, M., 65, 268 paradigmatic pole of language, 113
Oberschall, A., 134, 233 paradox
object, 1, 5, 9, 12, 25, 26, 33–4, 38–41, of consumption, 216–17
43, 48, 52, 56, 59, 74, 79, 93, 95, of identity/difference, 236–45, 268
99, 137, 141–2, 145, 151–2, 171, of structure and agency, 5, 187
177–8, 192, 196, 211, 213–14, Parekh, B., 229
217, 243, 265 Parker, I., 18
objectivity, 44–7, 52, 66, 74, 94, particularity
114, 145, 153–4, 182, 193, 228, vs. universality, 81, 82, 177–8, 199
261–2, 275 passion, 165–7, 170, 172, 179, 181
Olson, M., 128, 133–4, 242, 255 passionate attachment, 170, 178
On Populist Reason (Laclau), 82, 177 Paterson, M., 17
ontical contingency, 228–30 Patton, P., 15, 240, 268
ontical/ontological distinction, Peirce, C. S., 103
101–2 persuasion, 19, 253
ontological contingency, 91–3, 95–7, Peters, M., 279 n4
99, 108, 110, 115 Pettit, P., 128, 135

Phelan, S., 17
phenomenological reduction, 47,
114
phenomenology, 3, 7, 14, 21,
24, 35, 44–7, 50, 55, 62, 64, 74,
87, 105, 136
see also Heidegger; Husserl;
transcendental
philosophy of science, 141, 142
Plato, 48, 359
play of signifiers, 227
pluralism, 3, 11, 82, 144, 166–7, 173,
179
Polanyi, K., 63, 209
political, the
vs. ethical, 79, 81, 82, 88, 158
vs. ideological, 77, 126, 144, 166,
176
vs. social, 101–2, 121–2, 151, 176,
196, 254–6, 275
see also political dimension; political
logics; political practices;
primacy of politics
political analysis, problem-driven
approach to, 4
political change, 121–2, 151, 176, 196,
254–6, 275
political demands, 271
political dimension, 171, 205, 214
political logics, 208–9
see also difference; equivalence;
logics; political; primacy of
politics
political practices, 169, 200, 202,
205–6, 262, 272, 274
political science
development of, 16, 77, 98, 233
political-social axis, 119
politics, primacy of, 126, 155, 183,
220
Pontalis, J. B., 245
Popper, K. R., 119
populism, 82, 165, 176–8, 230
see also Laclau; political logics;
political; primacy of politics
positive theory, 133
positivism
challenges to, 92
critiques of, 85, 157
Index 329
growth of, 94, 266
problems with, 22, 44
support for, 61, 132, 173, 207, 263
transition to post-positivism, 59
Poster, M., 17, 72
post-Fordism, 217
post-Marxist theory, 7, 176
postmodernism, 21, 56, 58, 69, 71–3,
81, 226, 242, 265, 275
poststructuralism
criticism of, 56–7, 56–86
dilemmas of, 6, 24, 117, 227, 242,
244, 275
problematization of, 1, 4, 7, 13, 21,
56–86, 150, 211, 212
poststructuralist ontology, 22
Poulantzas, N., 9, 15, 123, 143–4, 194,
221–2
power
agency and, 1, 4, 5, 22, 23, 92, 115,
125, 225, 258
dimensions of, 202, 204–7, 211,
212, 214, 217, 220
domination and, 22, 64, 80,
187–224
resistance and, 80
structural, 285 n4
see also Bachrach; Baratz; Dahl;
Foucault; Lukes; Marx;
Schattschneider
power-knowledge, 190–1
practical reason, 178
practices
articulatory, 11, 155, 181, 213, 217,
258
ideological, 126–7, 209, 212–13,
218, 220, 223
political, 169, 173, 199–200, 202,
205–6, 262, 272, 274–5
repetitive actions, 28
reproduction of, 8
social, 1, 8, 10, 11, 32, 36, 46, 55,
70, 105–8, 114–15, 126, 137,
148, 172, 175–7, 181, 187, 188,
205, 218, 226, 254, 275
see also actions; subjectivity
prediction, 30, 111, 118, 172–3, 189
330 Index
preferences, 111, 132, 135, 173, 179,
200, 202, 233, 236, 247, 249, 252,
254–7
see also ideas; identity; interests;
Olson; rational choice theory
prejudgement, 66, 78, 170, 172,
181
primacy of politics, 126, 155,
183, 220
primitive societies, 28
problematization, 1, 4, 7, 13, 21,
56–86, 150, 211, 212
problem-driven research, 4
problem-driven theory, 4
problem of subsumption, 111, 183,
266
production
capitalist, 292 n2
forces of, 120, 123
Marx and Engels, 122, 254
material, 120, 134
modes of, 63, 120
relations of, 121
psychoanalysis, 6, 14, 18, 62, 74,
165, 171, 174–5, 177, 180, 182,
224, 245
psychologism, 147
public contestation, 205
quadripartite cycle of structuration,
139
quasi-transcendental inquiry, 146
Rabinow, P., 18, 189–90
racism, 230, 249, 251
radical contingency, 70, 79, 83–4, 119,
185, 187–8, 205, 208, 220, 223,
245, 247, 258, 261, 267, 269, 271,
274
radical materialism, 10, 11, 12, 93,
211, 269
Rancière J., 83, 86
rational choice theory, 108, 117–18,
128, 131, 133, 136, 200
rationality, 1, 44, 56, 66–7, 69,
102–3, 113, 132–3, 135, 165–6,
178, 184, 209, 263
Rawls, J., 128, 130, 133, 179, 236, 265
reactivation, 201
real, the
vs. political reality, 12, 92
see also incomplete, lack, ontology
of; void
reality
dimensions of, 212
interpretation of, 92–3
social, 5, 33, 61, 79, 89, 91, 114,
136, 151, 155, 161, 187, 205,
212, 225, 266
socio-political, 246
structure of, 93
real object world, 142, 145, 155
recognition, 23, 54, 69, 168–9, 224,
225–6, 228–30, 233–4, 250, 256,
262–4, 268, 275
redescription, 201, 207
redistribution, 23, 69, 169, 224, 228,
233–4, 262–3, 264, 275
reductionism
class, 209
linguistic, 52
textual, 70, 84
reflexivity, 170
regimes
of accumulation, 213, 215–19, 221
of capital accumulation, 215, 231
change of, 8, 12, 254
reproduction of, 213–16, 219–20,
222
regularities, 4, 92, 142–3, 211
regulation
of economy, 206
French Regulation Theory, 17, 109,
188, 208, 209, 213, 223
modes of, 213, 216, 219–21, 223
vs. reproduction, 213–15
reification, 5, 265
Rein, M., 107
relational, 152, 227, 275
relative autonomy, 112, 124, 125,
126, 144
relativism, 57–8, 70, 80, 84, 204, 267
representation(s), 1, 2, 3, 7, 15, 17, 24,
31, 34, 36, 41, 76–7, 80, 82, 92,
100, 104, 107, 109, 111, 130,
141–4, 162–5, 175, 180–1, 195,
199, 202, 207, 211, 226, 234, 238,
251, 262, 267
 Index 331

repressive hypothesis, 212 scepticism, 14–15, 23, 36, 38, 56–7,

reproduction 67, 77, 88–9, 143, 214, 219
auto, 209, 213 Schaap, A., 278 n4
vs. regulation, 215 Schattschneider, E., 201
social, 213, 214, 216, 246 Schatzki, T., 106
resonance, 157, 179, 203, 230 Schmitt, C., 133, 166
rhetoric, 18, 70, 72, 180, 200, 201, Schmitter, P., 133
203, 220, 253, 257 Schön, D., 107
rhetorical redescription, 201, 207 science, philosophy of, 141–2
Rhodes, R., 128, 159–60, 226 scientific knowledge, 34, 88, 147
see also beliefs; hermeneutics; scientific method, 36, 123, 141, 147
individual viewpoints; scientism, 13, 45, 47
interpretivism Scott, J., 242
Richardson, J., 256 sedimentation, 49, 115, 180, 213, 216,
Ricoeur, P., 105 223, 244, 251, 254, 274
Riker, W., 200 Seldon, A., 254
Ritzer, G., 4 self-interest, 88, 108, 130, 132–3, 249,
Rorty, R., 39, 66, 73–4, 90, 201 255, 257
Rosamond, B., 256–7 self-interpretations
Rose, G., 18
critique of positivism and, 85, 157
Rose, J., 18
inner states and, 114
Rose, N., 222
interpretation of, 106, 114, 212, 261
Rosen, S., 281 n3
vs. logics, 212
Roudinesco, E., 15
social structures and, 106
rule-following, 114, 214
Serres, M., 280 n2
rule-governed practice, 214
sexuality, 15, 168, 170, 171, 191, 212,
rules
234
applying, 214
Shain, M., 207
discourse and, 259
following, 114, 214 Shapiro, I., 77, 204, 273
formation, 258–61 Shapiro, K., 279 n4
of transformation, 33 Shapiro M., 277 n2, 277 n3, 288 n1
see also Winch; Wittgenstein Shepsle, K., 200
Russian Revolution, 8 sign, 9, 13, 25–7, 37–40, 42–3, 49–52,
Ryle, G., 107 73–4, 85, 214, 258
signifiers, 12, 18, 26–7, 35, 37, 40, 42,
Said, E., 16, 236, 242–4 54, 83–4, 114, 177, 193, 202, 204,
Salvadori, M., 194 207, 213–14, 227, 241, 243, 247,
Saussure, F. de, 13, 21, 24–9, 38–44, 250–1, 261, 270, 277
120, 123, 137, 153, 241, 270 signifying ontology, 14, 159, 171
diachronic vs. synchronic theory of Simons, J., 5, 265
language, 30 situated agency, 139
langue vs. parole, 25, 29, 43 Skinner, Q., 201, 259, 265
paradigmatic vs. syntagmatic, 92, Skocpol, T., 8
112, 113 Smart, B., 4
signification, 25, 34–7, 39, 43, 49, Smith, A., 62, 127, 130
74, 138, 158, 180, 199, 241, 251 Smith, A. M., 5, 162
signifier vs. signified, 27, 28 Smith, D. W., 11
value, 26, 39 Smith, M., 133
332 Index
social, the
vs. the political; social analysis;
social antagonism, 87–115
social antagonisms, 113, 154, 175,
243, 271–2
social change, 3, 20, 55, 81, 90, 92,
116, 118, 120, 123–5, 139, 146–8,
154–5, 162, 169, 176, 196, 220,
223, 231–2, 238, 255–9, 261, 271
social identities, 1, 23, 232, 244, 246,
250
social imaginary, 165–6
and myth, 164
social logics, 208
social mechanisms, 107
social movements, 62, 81, 134, 143,
157, 198, 230–3
social objectivity, 145, 154, 261–2
social order, 4, 5, 10, 72, 84, 91,
121–2, 124, 161, 163, 185, 205,
219–20, 246, 271–2, 283 n4
social practices
dimensions of, 1, 8, 10, 11, 32, 36,
46, 55, 70, 105–8, 114–15, 126,
137, 148, 172, 175–7, 181, 187,
188, 205, 218, 226, 254, 275
relationship between fantasmatic
logics and, 220, 247
social reality
misrecognition of, 264
regimes and, 212
social practices and, 220, 247
social relations, 220, 247
social roles, 28, 126, 170, 191, 237,
255
social sciences
crisis in, 43, 91–2, 109, 119
problem of prediction in, 147
social space, 165, 243
social structures, 2, 5, 8, 20, 34, 56, 70,
79, 85, 87, 118, 121–2, 125, 131,
135–6, 138, 141–2, 145–7, 152–4,
156, 161, 164, 182–3, 185–6, 205,
208, 220, 224, 246, 249–50, 254,
255, 258–9, 267, 270–3
social theory, value-free, 88, 90
sociological investigation, 101, 191
Sokal, A., 281 n1
Sørensen, E., 278 n4
South Africa, 162, 207, 242, 251, 260
speech
vs. writing, 40–1, 50, 52, 61
speech acts, 41, 43, 106, 189
Spinosa, C., 236
state, 16, 22, 133, 157, 197, 219
Staten, H., 11, 45, 48–50, 153–4, 214,
243
Stavrakakis, Y., 11, 15, 174–6, 180–1,
206, 245
Stoker, G., 80
Stones, R., 8, 90–1, 138–41, 143
Strathausen, C., 89
strong evaluation, 65
structural form, 216
structuralism, 2, 6–10, 13–14, 18, 21,
28, 50, 57–62, 69–71, 74, 76, 108,
119–20, 130
structural linguistics, 14, 37–8, 44, 69
structuration, 3, 4, 56, 90, 92, 117,
119, 136–40, 143, 150, 163, 182,
184, 223, 265–6, 268
structure
incomplete or lacking, 10, 55, 74
linguistic, 11, 28, 38, 42, 102, 165
social, 1, 2, 5, 8, 20, 25, 34, 35–6, 56,
70, 79, 85, 87, 118, 121–2, 131,
138, 141–2, 145–7, 152–4, 156,
161, 164, 182–3, 185–6, 205,
208, 220, 224, 246, 249–50,
254, 255, 258–9, 267, 270–3
structure-in-dominance, 112, 124–6
struggle
hegemonic, 221
political, 195–6, 213, 218–19, 221,
230, 275
social, 231
subject
incomplete or lacking, 161
position, 47, 250
see also agency; subjectivity
subjective meanings, 114
subjectivity, 1, 7, 12, 14, 19, 22, 43,
46, 102, 125, 130, 147, 151, 155,
158, 164, 165, 172, 183, 195,
223–4
radical subjectivity, 161–2, 164, 246
subjectivization, 169, 225, 247
subordination, 167–8
 Index 333

Sullivan, W., 18 tradition

Sum, N.-L., 109, 209, 213, 216–17, 221 Marxist, 19, 62, 70, 89, 127, 188,
Swift, A., 135 194, 195, 274
symbolic poststructuralist, 3, 5, 6, 56, 73, 78,
codes, 3, 53–4, 256 120, 154, 180, 187, 267, 268
law, 34 Western, 239, 259
order, 10, 12, 28, 33, 35–6, 55, 93, transcendence
152, 158–9, 175, 180–1, 187, Husserl and, 3, 21, 24, 50, 55, 87
191, 203, 223, 246, 270–1 problem of, 7, 44
rules, 187–8 transcendent, 66, 153
syntagmatic relations, 27, 28, 112 transcendental
system grounds, 78, 101
incomplete, 10, 271 laws, 38
linguistic, 2, 27, 39, 41, 42, 54, phenomenology, 3, 7, 21, 24, 46–8,
224 50, 55, 87
social, 9, 25, 55, 62, 115, 118, 125, signified, 9, 11, 39
136–7, 186, 209, 213, 241 subject, 47, 49, 74, 95
systematicity, 5, 39, 146 transformation, 1, 25, 33, 39, 51, 78,
115, 121, 141, 147, 168, 186, 192,
Tallis, R., 58 215, 238, 254, 260, 262, 270
Taylor, C., 65–6, 77, 96, 105–6, transgression, 289 n2
129–30, 158, 235 transitivity, 89
tendencies Triantafillou, P., 222
crisis, 217 Trifonas, P., 279
testing, 88, 142, 147, 218 truth, 10, 14, 44–5, 48–9, 64, 66, 68,
see also empirical testing; theory 72–3, 81, 89, 103–5, 142, 189,
testing 204, 210, 212, 244
Texier, J., 197 truth value, 66–7
theoretical approaches, integration of, Tully J., 17, 113, 179, 228–9, 235, 242
118, 156, 243 Turkle, S., 236, 242
theory testing, 88, 104, 131, 142, 233,
247–8 undecidability, 40, 161–2
Thomas, P., 197 understanding
Thomassen, L., 19, 67 of being, 95, 97, 98, 100
Thompson, J., 137 of poststructuralism, 18, 210, 247
thrown projection, 97 universalism, 81, 83, 171
Todorov, T., 277 n1 universality
Tønder, L., 19, 87, 235 vs. particularity, 82, 177, 199
Torfing, J., 17, 85, 160, 216, 218–19 universal laws, 178
Tormey, S., 277 n3, 288 n1 universal reason, 69, 129
totality universal rights, 128
complex, 125
identity, 70 Valentine, J., 20
linguistic, 241 value
social, 137 linguistic, 26, 39, 241
Touraine, A., 231 political, 139
Townshend, J., 70, 84, 188 sign, 27, 36
trace, 51 word, 25–6, 40
trace-structure, 50–1 value-free social theory, 88, 90
334 Index

values, 27, 39, 57, 61, 65, 80, 82–4, Widder, N., 76, 221, 240
105, 107, 132, 158, 166, 174, Wight, C., 91, 144
176–7, 200, 231, 249, 256–7 Williams, J., 5, 64
Vattimo, G., 57 Williams, R., 188
visceral register, 111, 172–3, 179, 181 Willmott, H., 18
Visker, R., 191 will to power, 68
void, 246 will to truth, 68
see also lack ontology of; incomplete Winch, P., 92, 94, 114
structure or order see also hermeneutics; meanings;
voting, 179 rules
wishful thinking, 132, 174, 253
Wagenaar, H., 107 Wittgenstein, L., 54, 74, 83, 92, 114,
Walters, W., 70 207, 214, 259, 269
Walzer, M., 105–6, 235 see also language games; rules
Ward H., 132, 134 Wodak, R., 189
war of position Wolfreys, J., 107
vs. war of movement, 198 Woodiwiss, A., 144, 209
Watkins, J. W. N., 284 n3 working class, 2, 184, 229–31, 253
Weale, A., 104 world order, 12
Webb, D., 280 n2 writing
Weber, M., 254 grammatology, 24, 39, 44, 50
Weeks, J., 278 n4 vs. speech, 40–1, 50, 52, 61
welfare state, 217 Wrong, D., 4
Wendt, A., 109
Wenman, M., 277 n3, 278 n4 Young, I. M., 179
Western Young, M., 229, 234
discourses, 39, 49, 73, 87, 94 Young, R., 17, 242
Marxists, 15, 69
metaphysics, 14, 38, 43, 66, 68, 71, Zac, L., 161, 184
240 Zaretsky, E., 236
societies, 44 Zerilli, L., 277 n2, 278 n4
thinking, 41–2, 239 Žižek, S., 12, 19–20, 28, 59, 66, 72–3,
thought, 101, 119, 259 81, 153, 161, 174–7, 182, 204,
tradition, 48, 153, 239, 259 206–7, 229–30, 246, 270
Wheen, F., 58 see also enjoyment; fantasy; Freud;
White, S., 89 psychoanalysis; subject