Social Order and Political Subject in Laclau's Political Theory

Abstract

Laclau thinks that the incomplete character of the structure of social order and the precarious character of the identity of the collective subject are produced by the presence of antagonism. The lack is the fundamental attribute of the society and the subject; consequently, the full construction of the subject and the society becomes impossible. Contrary to marxian conception of universal identity of class, the collective subject is fragmented in many differential positions of contingent social structure. Laclau’ s theory offers a subject that, in the openness of the social differential identities, articulates partial and non-determinist identities in chains of equivalences, producing a shared hegemonic in a shared hegemonic signifier.