Well burrowed, old mole!

Session 1: Introduction to Laclau’s Theory of Hegemony

1. Illusions of Modern Bourgeois Philosophy

     At the beginning of the 20^th century three new developments in philosophy were taking place.  Each was based on a strategy which its proponents felt could grant immediate access to the thing in itself. The three strategies were analytic philosophy, phenomenology and structuralism.   All of their key words (referent, phenomenon and sign) played the role of what Levinas called a “neutralizing third term” they appeared to efface themselves in the process of bringing forth the unmediated truth of the world.  As time passed, these third terms became increasingly visible to practitioners of the strategies which they founded.  In the work of the late Wittgenstein and Richard Rorty, Martin Heidegger, Roland Barthes Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida we see a realization that the founding notions of 20^th century philosophy did not grant the immediacy that they had promised.

Read the rest of this entry »