Laclau Seminar Notes Session 2: Floating Signifiers and Heterogeneity
- The Moment of Hegemony
This is a simplified depiction of the moment of hegemony. The X represents those on top of the frontier. The antagonistic frontier can be said to be power, the X is sometimes a government. It can also be the ruling class within a society. The O’s below the frontier are the oppositional desires or the demands of those who are below the line. The oval which is raised above the Os is the empty or hegemonic signifier, the arrow shows its origin from a particular desire or demand. These particular demands are arranged in an equivalential series by the emergence of the hegemonic signifier, the universalization or emptying of the hegemonic signifier is represented by the lines stretching from the oval to the chain of Os.
This is a depiction of a situation in which those who are below the frontier of power have a series of demands which are unmet, and though their demands are different from one another, those who have these differing demands come to see them as equivalent and form a group under the articulation of one particular demand which comes to stand for opposition to X. For instance, if many people have needs which are unmet in present day America, such as the need for affordable housing and health care, the desire to have more efficient garbage pickup in their neighborhood, the desire for a humane foreign policy and so on, they may end up campaigning for these diverse goals through the mediation of a group which articulates a different demand. If these demands remain latent in the population, at any given moment if another group launches a large scale protest those with latent demands may join it even though it does not articulate their particular concern because it articulates unmet demand.
The X is in fact a group of people. In order for them to maintain their position above the frontier, they must restrict the formation of such an equivalential logic. If those who live under power can form a large enough equivalential chain they can overthrow those who are not meeting their demands. There are two means by which the X will seek to keep the equivalential chain from forming, by articulating a logic of difference, or by constructing an alternative logic of equivalence.
Well burrowed, old mole! 