order; an order that satisfied the long- Military power is no longer the modus

term goals of the hegemon (109). Binding
the question of hegemony to the history of
German geopolitics challenges the founda-
tional assumptions of liberal hegemonic
theories: hegemons create stability – at
least theoretically – and shoulder the costs
of institution-building to foster advanta-
geous economic and political conditions
across the region. Kundani sees Germany
inherently as a source of instability,
regardless of the degree to which we might
assign that state hegemonic status.
operandi of European states in their strug-
gles to realize national interests. Rather,
economic power and trade have become
the new tools of statecraft and Germany’s
economic growth has placed it in the posi-
tion of ‘geo-economic semi-hegemony’
according to the author. Rather than pro-
voking coalitions to counter the strength of
Germany’s armed forces, Kundani sees a
new type of ‘encirclement’ thrust upon
Germany as its neighbours aim to contain
German economic power (109).

About the Author

Luke B. Wood is an Associate Instructor of Political Science and European Studies at Indiana
University.

the hedgehog from the pampas:

ernesto laclau and the
impossibility of society
jüri lipping
Institute of Government and Politics, University of Tartu, Lossi 36, Tartu 51003, Estonia
E-mail: lipping@ut.ee

doi: 10.1057/eps.2015.49; published online 28 August 2015

Books reviewed
The rhetorical foundations of society
Ernesto Laclau (London, Verso, 2014), 256 pp., ISBN: 978-1781681701

Ernesto Laclau: Post-marxism, populism, and critique

David Howarth (ed.) (London, Routledge, 2015), 294 pp., ISBN: 978-0415870870

rgentinian political theorist Ernesto University of Essex. Ever since the pub-

A Laclau, who died in April 2014, was

a long-standing professor and the
founder of the Ideology and Discourse
Analysis doctoral programme at the
lication, 30 years ago, of his ground-
breaking book Hegemony and Socialist
Strategy (co-authored with Chantal
Mouffe), Laclau’s name has become a

jüri lipping european political science: 15 2016 271

 standard reference in the field of post-
Marxism, the terrain that he helped to
create through a deconstructive reading
of the Marxist tradition, rejecting along
the way its various forms of essentialism
(economic determinism, class reduction-
ism, historicist teleology). Laclau pro-
vided an extremely original and
provoking synthesis of Marxism with
diverse strands of contemporary critical
theory and centred around the Gramsci-
inspired notion of hegemony.
By utilizing the conceptual resources of
post-structuralist philosophy, and by
expanding the theoretical arsenal of the
Gramscian political thought in particular,
Laclau has radically innovated a vocabu-
lary of politics and introduced a whole set
of new categories to political analysis. His
intellectual efforts have brought about an
inventive and memorable reformulation
of many key concepts of political theoriz-
ing such as power (‘power is a trace of
contingency within the structure’ (in
Howarth, 2015: 28)), subject (‘subject is
a distance between the undecidability of
the structure and the decision’ (in Mouffe,
1996: 56)), hegemony (‘hegemony is a
theory of the decision taken in an unde-
cidable terrain’ (Laclau, 1996: 90)), ideol-
ogy (‘ideological distortion projects on a
particular object the impossible fullness of
the community’ (in Howarth, 2015: 80)),
representation (‘representation is the pri-
mary terrain of constitution of social
objectivity’ (Laclau, 2005: 163)), popu-
lism (‘constructing a “people” is the main
task of radical politics’ (in Howarth, 2015:
165)), and society (‘society does not
exist’ (in Laclau, 1990: 249)).
The latter thesis in particular has become
a veritable catchphrase of Laclau’s dis-
course-analytical political theory. Formu-
lated as early as 1983 in a short article
‘The Impossibility of Society’ (included in
Laclau, 1990), the fundamental insight that
‘society is not a valid object of discourse’
(Laclau and Mouffe, 1985: 126) – that
‘ “society” as a unitary and intelligible
272 european political science: 15 2016 the hedgehog from the pampas
object which grounds its own partial pro-
cesses is an impossibility’ (Laclau, 1990:
90) – has guided all Laclauian endeavours
to theorize the nature of political unity and
the status of social totality. What prevents
society from completely constituting itself
as a wholly objective order is the presence
of ineradicable antagonistic relations that
permeate the field of the social. As there is
no transcendental signified, no single
underlying principle that could arrest the
endless play of signification and thus cir-
cumscribe the whole field of differences, all
attempts to institute society as a self-suffi-
cient entity will necessarily fail. This failure,
however, is a productive one because the
lack of fullness is precisely what instigates
the search for better arrangements and
motivates the formation of new identities.
As Laclau repeatedly emphasizes, the
condition of possibility of something is also
its condition of impossibility. While the
impossible object named society can never
be present in its full positivity – this insight
derives naturally from the critique of the
metaphysics of presence – it can nonethe-
less be re-presented, albeit in a necessarily
oblique and twisted way. Laclau speaks in
this connection of ‘constitutive distortion’,
which implies projecting into something
that is essentially divided the illusion of a
fullness and self-transparency. The space
of representation is therefore inherently
figural or rhetorical, and, since literality is
no more than an (impossible) zero degree
of figurality, the tropological movements
preside over the constitution of whatever
identity, subjectivity or totality. As Laclau
argues, ‘a central place in this rhetorical
ordering is occupied by catachresis – that
is, by figural terms that cannot be substi-
tuted by literal ones’ (Laclau, 2014: 123).
Rhetorical figures are thus endowed with
an ontological value. The elucidation of this
claim is precisely the subject of Laclau’s
last book, The Rhetorical Foundations of
Society.
Basically a selection of articles published
during the last 15 years, The Rhetorical
Foundations of Society is no systematic
treatise on the subject, unlike Laclau’s
penultimate book, On Populist Reason
(2005). The title is aptly chosen, while
the notion of ‘rhetorical foundations’
could be regarded as Laclau’s rejoinder
to the notion of ‘contingent foundations’
proposed by Butler (1992). As she
argues, the point is not to do away with
foundations altogether but, rather, ‘to
interrogate what the theoretical move
that establishes foundations authorizes,
and what precisely it excludes or fore-
closes’ (Butler, 1992: 7). Along the same
line, Laclau explicitly characterizes his
essays as ‘contributions to the construc-
tion of a political ontology’ in view of the
displacement of the general ontological
terrain, that is, in the context of post-
foundationalism which, in the words
of Oliver Marchart, refers to ‘a constant
interrogation of metaphysical figures of
foundation – such as totality, universal-
ity, essence, and ground’ (Marchart,
2007: 2).
This has been Laclau’s fundamental
claim all along, namely, that politics
(in its hegemonic dimension) does not
designate any regional or ontic category
within the wider social field, but should
rightly be considered as the moment of
the institution and constitution of the
social. However, it is only recently that
Laclau has directly discussed the ques-
tion of ontology and attempted to gen-
eralize the philosophical background of
his hegemonic approach to politics. The
chapter ‘Antagonism, Subjectivity and
Politics’ (the only text previously unpub-
lished in English) puts this succinctly:
The Heideggerian Abgrund, the Laca-
nian objet a, and the Gramscian ‘hege-
monic class’ show a similar ontological
structure. In all three cases we have the
ontological investment in an ontic
object, and in all three cases the con-
tingent character of this investment
shows itself through its radical putting-
itself-into-question: there is no ‘mani-
fest destiny’ requiring that the ontologi-
cal investment take place in that
particular object. It is in that sense that
the moment of the investment is con-
stitutive: it cannot be explained by any
underlying logic different from itself.
It is for that reason that the abyss is
also ground. (Laclau, 2014: 122)
Laclau argues elsewhere that he has
tried to detect the multiplicity of discur-
sive surfaces in which the irreducible
‘ontological difference’ shows itself in
modern and post-modern philosophy
and political theory (in Critchley and
Marchart, 2004: 338). The originary split
between the ontological and the ontic
orders opens up a space of tension
between universality and particularity,
and consequently gives rise to alternat-
ing processes of constitution and desti-
tution of society. These processes –
Laclau also employs terms such as
grounding and degrounding, or sedi-
mentation and reactivation – are gov-
erned by two opposing yet mutually
implicated movements. As Laclau puts it
in an interview with David Howarth, one
can find the same basic homology at all
levels of analysis of human reality: ‘in
linguistics it is the duality paradigm/
syntagm; in rhetoric, metaphor/meto-
nymy; in psychoanalysis, condensation/
displacement; and in politics, equiva-
lence/difference’ (in Howarth, 2015:
261). The logic of operation is always
inherently the same: certain particular
objects will be invested with a new
dimension transcending their ontic rea-
lity. This is what hegemony is all about,
and that is why political moment has a
foundational – that is, constitutive – role
to play in human social life.
The essay collection Ernesto Laclau:
Post-Marxism, Populism, and Critique,
which appears in the series ‘Routledge
Innovators in Political Theory’, is a stan-
dard selection of rather familiar writings
jüri lipping european political science: 15 2016 273
 by Laclau that span the 30-years period
beginning from 1977, although the bulk
of it dates roughly from the decade
between 1995 and 2005. There is some
overlap with The Rhetorical Foundations;
indeed, one third of the essays contained
in the latter also appear in the former.
As its title suggests, Post-Marxism, Popu-
lism, and Critique is divided into three
thematic blocs where the first part pre-
sents, in words of the editor Howarth,
‘the key ontological assumptions and
postulates of Laclau’s mature theory,
focusing especially on his concept of dis-
course and its implications for social and
political analysis’ (Howarth, 2015: 18).
The second part offers three texts that
deal – historically and conceptually – with
the phenomenon of populism which has
been Laclau’s recurrent interest through-
out his career not only as a scholar but
as public intellectual as well, reflecting
his long-time experience with Latin
American politics.
What is lacking in this selection are
more detailed accounts of the affective
dimension which, after all, forms an inte-
gral part of the hegemonic logic. As Laclau
has repeatedly emphasized, ‘there cannot
be any stark separation between signifi-
cation and affect, given that the latter is
only constituted through a differential
cathecting of the various components of a
signifying chain’ (Laclau, 2014: 65–66).
Considering various misunderstandings
that Laclau’s deployment of Lacanian
psychoanalysis has generated, and in
view of the ‘affective turn’ in today’s
humanities and social sciences, including
some relevant material from the book
On Populist Reason would have been
helpful.
About one third of both books consists of
essays in which Laclau discusses the work
of various contemporary radical thinkers
by subjecting them to a critical assessment
from the perspective of his own theory of
hegemony. As Howarth rightly remarks,
one important characteristic of Laclau’s
274 european political science: 15 2016 the hedgehog from the pampas
work has been his willingness to engage
publicly with a wide range of different
theorists. Throughout his career, Laclau
has built his theory in a constant dialogue
with alternative intellectual currents, bear-
ing in mind Gramsci’s remark that one
always needs the stimulus of some agonis-
tic confrontation to develop one’s own
thought. These essays are exciting read-
ings which demonstrate their author’s
ability to give serious thought to rival the-
oretical approaches, to explore the extent
to which these can be adapted and repro-
duced in his own approach, all the while
considering respective differences and dis-
agreements against some commonly
shared background.
In his otherwise very sympathetic
review of Jacques Derrida’s Specters of
Marx, Laclau points out Derrida’s tempta-
tion to provide the political moment with
the messianic twist, and to (over)load
ontological emptiness with the emancipa-
tory potential. However, such a transition
from structural undecidability to an ethical
injunction should be considered as illegiti-
mate, according to Laclau: ‘from the fact
that there is the impossibility of ultimate
closure and presence, it does not follow
that there is an ethical imperative to “cul-
tivate” that openness or even less to be
necessarily committed to a democratic
society’ (in Howarth, 2015: 208). By situ-
ating his own theoretical intervention
somewhere between deconstruction and
pragmatism, Laclau also agrees with a
great deal of Richard Rorty’s analysis,
especially with his post-metaphysical,
anti-essentialist approach to the matters
of politics, yet he criticizes Rorty’s notion
of ‘liberal utopia’ for a series of short-
comings, not least for his inability to
recognize that antagonism constitutes
the very condition of democratic society:
‘Rorty sees as necessarily united many
things that for me are radically discon-
tinuous … For Rorty the three words
“bourgeois liberal democracy” constitute
an indivisible whole; for me there is
between them only a contingent articula-
tion’ (in Howarth, 2015: 253–234).
Giorgio Agamben’s project of Homo
Sacer, on the other hand, incurs some
deep reservations concerning its theo-
retical conclusions. His genealogy of
sovereign power is not sensitive enough
to the structural diversity that derives
from the existence of antagonistic social
practices in various political contexts.
By misinterpreting the political (non)rela-
tion between sovereignty and bare life,
which in Agamben’s overly pessimistic
perspective represents the unavoidable
advance towards a totalitarian society –
cf. his claim that the concentration camp is
the secret destiny of Western politics –
Agamben ignores the emancipatory possi-
bilities that each new situation opens:
‘Instead of deconstructing the logic of
political institutions, showing areas in
which forms of struggle and resistance
are possible, he closes them beforehand
through an essentialist unification. Politi-
cal nihilism is his ultimate message’
(in Howarth, 2015: 241).
Laclau also discusses several weak-
nesses in the theoretical edifice of Michael
Hardt and Antonio Negri, claiming that
‘what is totally lacking in Empire is a the-
ory of articulation, without which politics
is unthinkable’ (in Howarth, 2015: 218).
Their central theoretical category of
immanence dispenses with any idea of
political mediation which is based on the
recognition of radical social division, that
is, antagonism. The political subject that
their theory presupposes – multitude as a
natural expression of positive, creative
and disruptive forces, as a spontaneous
unity of singular elemental resistances –
has no need for any work of hegemonic
articulation. But that renders political
action utterly redundant. As Laclau puts
it, the real theoretical watershed in con-
temporary discussions is ‘either we
assert the possibility of a universality
that is not politically constructed and
mediated or we assert that all universality
is precarious and depends on a historical
construction out of heterogeneous ele-
ments’ (in Howarth, 2015: 216).
In this regard, Laclau finds Alain Badiou’s
ethical reflections most congenial, but
he takes issue with Badiou over the more
general question concerning the project of
fundamental ontology. Here Laclau suc-
cinctly reiterates his theoretical position
which so clearly underpins the whole fra-
mework of The Rhetorical Foundations of
Society:
Is there a field that is more primary than
that uncovered by set theory which
would allow us properly to account
ontologically for the type of relations
that we are exploring? I think there is,
and it is linguistics …. Metaphor, meto-
nymy, synecdoche (and especially cat-
achresis as their common denominator)
are not categories describing adorn-
ments of language, as classical philoso-
phy had it, but ontological categories
describing the constitution of objectiv-
ity as such. (Laclau, 2014: 204–205)
Slavoj Žižek, finally, stands accused of
many serious errors, most hilarious of
which – given Žižek’s penchant to call
himself a ‘card-carrying Lacanian’ –
being his inability to ‘understand the
theoretical status of the Lacanian Real’
(in Howarth, 2015: 184). This is because
of the fact that ‘Žižek systematically dis-
torts Lacanian theory to make it compa-
tible with a Hegelianism which is, in most
respects, its very opposite’ (in Howarth,
2015: 174). As a consequence, Žižek’s
approach displays a total blindness to
the hegemonic dimension of politics,
which is even more striking since Žižek
used to claim that the authors of Hege-
mony had reinvented, through their con-
cept of antagonism, the Lacanian notion
of the Real as impossible, and demon-
strated its relevance for the social-ideo-
logical field.
Ten years ago, Laclau outlined the pro-
grammatic perspective of his research
jüri lipping european political science: 15 2016 275
 along the three axes that together consti-
tute a sort of theoretical space: ‘Rhetoric,
psychoanalysis, and politics (conceived as
hegemony): in this triad I see the future of
social and political thought’ (in Critchley
and Marchart, 2004: 326). Laclau has
made substantial contributions along all
of them, as is also testified by the two
present essay collections, which repre-
sent his legacy in the best possible way.
Without delving deep into these often
exciting and always inspiring essays, a
few final words about the general intel-
lectual outlook of their author. To my
mind, Laclau has always been, to employ
Isaiah Berlin’s celebrated distinction
(‘the fox knows many things, but the
hedgehog knows one big thing’), a
veritable hedgehog. He had this one big
idea – the fundamental insight into the
antagonistic nature of society – which he
ceaselessly explored from many differ-
ent angles and theoretical perspectives
(philosophical, psychoanalytical, rheto-
rical, semiotic). It would not be an exag-
geration to say that Laclau has tried to
develop the intellectual architectonic of
‘populist reason’, working everything
into his main thesis concerning the hege-
monic character of the social link and the
ontological centrality of the political.
He was indeed a great systematizer who
succeeded in setting up one of the most
exciting theoretical frameworks for
analysing social processes as well as
fostering political emancipation.

References

Butler, J. (1992) ‘Contingent Foundations: Feminisms and the Question of ‘Postmodernism’’, in J. Butler
and J. W. Scott (eds.) Feminists Theorize the Political, New York: Routledge.
Critchley, S. and Marchart, O. (2004) Laclau: A Critical Reader, London: Routledge.
Howarth, D. (ed.) (2015) Ernesto Laclau: Post-Marxism, Populism, and Critique, London: Routledge.
Laclau, E. (1990) New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, London: Verso.
Laclau, E. (1996) Emancipation(s), London: Verso.
Laclau, E. (2005) On Populist Reason, London: Verso.
Laclau, E. (2014) The Rhetorical Foundations of Society, London: Verso.
Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics,
London: Verso.
Marchart, O. (2007) Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and
Laclau, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Mouffe, C. (ed.) (1996) Deconstruction and Pragmatism, London: Routledge.

About the Author

Jüri Lipping is a Lecturer of Comparative Politics in the Institute of Government and Politics at
the University of Tartu. His research interests include continental political thought, theories of
the political, post-Marxism, and deconstruction. He has edited and translated the collection of
Laclau’s essays Antagonism, Politics, Hegemony into Estonian.

276 european political science: 15 2016 the hedgehog from the pampas