Laclau and Mouffe - Discourse Theory - Hegemony, Antagonism and Dislocation

In this video I present you Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory. Discourse theory questions existing knowledge regimes and power structures. It is a radical deconstruction of the neutrality of our social reality. The theory is very complex I hope you will enjoy it. Laclau and Mouffe's main work is called 'Hegemony and Socialist Strategy' and was published in 1985. It is mainly on this work that the content of the video is based. These are the chapters:

00:00 Introduction
00:57 Discourse and Social Reality
08:15 Logic of Discourse: Equivalence and Difference
12:15 Antagonism
15:55 Hegemony
22:08 Dislocation

If you want to read more, I recommend:
Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (2014). Hegemony and socialist strategy: Towards a radical democratic politics. Verso Trade.

Jørgensen, M. W., & Phillips, L. J. (2002). Discourse analysis as theory and method. Sage.

Stengel, F. A., & Nabers, D. (2019). Symposium: The Contribution of Laclau’s Discourse Theory to International Relations and International Political Economy Introduction.

Jacobs, T. (2018). The dislocated universe of Laclau and Mouffe: An introduction to post-structuralist discourse theory. Critical Review, 30(3-4), 294-315.

Nabers, D. (2015). Dislocation. In A Poststructuralist Discourse Theory of Global Politics (pp. 151-174). Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

[miguelsegura]

Thank you very much for your work! I would say it could help to the explanation if you put one or two particular cases for each concept that you present, in order to link the abstract ideas with the general experience of the audience, as a general rule of thumb to make the contents easier to understand. Justus Hartnack for instance does this (almost) the whole time in his History of philosophy.

[RalphMcDonald-svld]

Thank you for excellent presentation! Helpful to see how much Laclau and Mouffe build on Foucault and Derrida.

[Reecewgee]

Hey just wanted to say thanks for this video as you have straddled the need for succinctness and the need for detail brilliantly; other videos on this text either oversimplify or leave you as perplexed as you were to begin with haha. I found this a difficult text and thinking back on the key concepts after having watched your video I found it looked a little clearer.

[yinanguo]

You are super helpful! This topic is hard for me. Try my best to catch up with you. However, Totally lost when you start the antagonism part. It's definitely not your fault! Without you, I would have given up after swearing the professor for assigning us a paper that even he can't understand. Now I know someone can understand this discourse theory! How about adding some examples to your paper?

[imanorangeable]

This is such a great contribution to discourse (hehe). Thank you so much.

[Harry-lqjz]

But (!) I really liked your linking of "causation" to "determination"... I didn't really think of causation like that although probably I should have come across it by now... Anyway this insight is very useful for me and so I thank you for it! Keep up the good work! ;-)))

[Harry-lqjz]

Hi, you introduce new concepts suddenly and all the time without really giving us no definitions or anything to make sense of them, e.g. "signifiers", "field of overdetermination", etc. Or, to put it another way, you haven't "articulated" those "elements" properly! :D (Note: articulation is simply the linking of a concept to a new discursive frame so that the understanding of the concept is altered - think of the concept "migration" which has largely been articulated within "the economy" discourse which might mean "migrants" are those who steals native population's jobs - but now imagine "migration" is suddenly began articulated within another, "international security" discourse - then the meaning of "migrants" changes from job thieves to threat to national security, etc. - THINK SIMPLE!!!) This might be understandable since you appear to just take the outline of Laclau and Mouffe's 1985 book and use that to guide your view on their theory but my advice for you is to start from what Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory boils right down to... which is that the chain of signifiers can potentially be infinitely expanded. So explain these terms, why Laclau and Mouffe see the chain like that, and then what Laclau and Mouffe considers political subjects do because of it, etc. So, ""KEEP THINGS SIMPLE""!!! If not, you get confused and make others confused, too! ;-)

[MasBeauty]

Thank you so much for this explanation it really helped me to get though HSS. What are your thoughts on Mouffe being labelled as a relativist?

[masakoseptianingrumo]

Hi there, I am currently writing a research using Laclau’s discourse theory. I have several questions and are you open to discussion through emails? Thank you!

[lanafared]

Hey, could you make a video on how to apply this theory? I mean what perspective does this open, how I can work with it?

[DanBaftFarsi]

your videos are amazing! I have read lots of texts on the subjects but your videos were the most helpful! thank you

[marcotigno]

Thank you so much. This is helping me in understanding my Theoretical Framework.