Politics as construction of the unthinkable

Ernesto Laclau

Marianne Liisberg | Aarhus University

Arthur Borriello | Université Libre de Bruxelles

Benjamin De Cleen | Vrije Universiteit Brussel

This article is the English translation of a text originally published by Ernesto Laclau in French in 1981 as part of the proceedings of the colloquium Materialités Discursives held in Nanterre on 24–26 April 1980. In this text, Ernesto Laclau reflects on the subject of hegemony as a discursively constructed phenomenon. Building on research on the discursive construction of the acceptability of popular front politics in 1935 during the Seventh Congress of the Komintern, the author proposes a number of broader arguments on the notion of antagonism and on some of the problems related to the Marxist conception of totality.

Keywords: hegemony, discourse, popular front, Komintern, Marxism

Published online: 14 December 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.20078.lac

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