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The Essex School of discourse analysis, or simply 'The Essex School', refers to a type of scholarship founded on the works of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. It focuses predominantly on the political discourses of late modernity utilising discourse analysis, as well as post-structuralist and psychoanalytic theory, such as may be found in the works of Lacan, Foucault, Barthes, and Derrida. Discourse analysis, according to its own terms at least, seeks to "unfix and destabilise" the accepted meanings of everyday language, and to reveal how the dominant discourse "marginalises and oppresses... equally valid claims to the question of how power could and should be exercised." [1]
Founding figures of this approach are Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, two post-Marxist political theorists, who, tried, since the 1970s, to reinterpret Gramsci’s theory of hegemony to highlight the role of meaning and of processes of interpellation and identification in the creation of political identities and in the articulation and sedimentation of political discourses and hegemonic orders. The paradigmatic formulation of this approach and of its various conceptual innovations can be found in Laclau’s and Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy , first published in 1985, as well as in subsequent works. [2]
The approach developed by Laclau and Mouffe provided the teaching backbone of the graduate program in Ideology and Discourse Analysis Laclau founded at the University of Essex in the early 1980s. [3] Already from its inception, the program attracted many MA and PhD students from around the globe, especially from Argentina, Mexico, Greece, Denmark, Spain, the US and the UK. Many PhD theses further developing Laclau’s and Mouffe’s discourse theory and applying it in the analysis of empirical cases have since been completed. The activities of the Centre for Theoretical Studies in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, also founded by Laclau at the University of Essex (and now co-directed by Norval and Howarth), also served as a hub for the group. [4]
Graduates of the program are now employed by universities in many parts of the world, while the program itself is run by three members of staff at Essex: Aletta Norval, David Howarth and Jason Glynos, all ex-PhD students of Laclau. Academics associated with the program have also set up a World Network in Ideology and Discourse Analysis, [5] which provides a web-based channel of communication between its 203 registered members and has organized the Inaugural World Conference in Ideology and Discourse Analysis, which took place from 8-10 September 2008 at Roskilde University, Denmark, with Ernesto Laclau as keynote speaker. [6] Beginning in 2000, a series of monographs, edited collections, and textbooks by members of the group, some of them based on the doctoral research conducted within the program were published, synthesizing the group's work. [7] As the group has attained more recognition within the academic community, it has begun to be included within the field of discourse analysis in textbooks and introductions to the field published by independent scholars. [8] As a result of all these developments, the distinct identity of the group and of its research output gradually triggered a process of naming. From 2003 onwards, when critics wanted to refer to the work of members of the group, they used the phrase ‘the Essex School’, [9] which is now widely used. [10]
The theoretical traditions influencing Mouffe and Laclau are primarily Saussurean linguistics, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and deconstruction.[ citation needed ] The Essex School does not limit the research direction of its members, each one of whom develops their own approach independently; it offers, however, a loose framework within which a multitude of theoretical and political interventions can flourish, enriching the original vision of Laclau and Mouffe.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to critical theory:
Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of power. Although post-structuralists all present different critiques of structuralism, common themes among them include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of structuralism, as well as an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute its structures. Accordingly, post-structuralism discards the idea of interpreting media within pre-established, socially constructed structures.
Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. Following pioneering work by Michel Foucault, these fields view discourse as a system of thought, knowledge, or communication that constructs our experience of the world. Since control of discourse amounts to control of how the world is perceived, social theory often studies discourse as a window into power. Within theoretical linguistics, discourse is understood more narrowly as linguistic information exchange and was one of the major motivations for the framework of dynamic semantics, in which expressions' denotations are equated with their ability to update a discourse context.
Hegemony is the political, economic, and military predominance of one state over other states. Hegemony can be regional or global.
Deliberation is a process of thoughtfully weighing options, for example prior to voting. Deliberation emphasizes the use of logic and reason as opposed to power-struggle, creativity, or dialogue. Group decisions are generally made after deliberation through a vote or consensus of those involved.
In Marxist philosophy, cultural hegemony is the dominance of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class who shape the culture of that society—the beliefs and explanations, perceptions, values, and mores—so that the worldview of the ruling class becomes the accepted cultural norm. As the universal dominant ideology, the ruling-class worldview misrepresents the social, political, and economic status quo as natural, inevitable, and perpetual social conditions that benefit every social class, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class.
Ernesto Laclau was an Argentine political theorist and philosopher. He is often described as an 'inventor' of post-Marxist political theory. He is well known for his collaborations with his long-term partner, Chantal Mouffe.
Chantal Mouffe is a Belgian political theorist, formerly teaching at University of Westminster.
The term new social movements (NSMs) is a theory of social movements that attempts to explain the plethora of new movements that have come up in various western societies roughly since the mid-1960s which are claimed to depart significantly from the conventional social movement paradigm.
In semiotics and discourse analysis, floating signifiers are signifiers without a referent. The term open signifier is sometimes used as a synonym due to the empty signifier's nature to "resist the constitution of any unitary meaning", enabling its ability to remain open to different meanings in different contexts.
Agonism is a political and social theory that emphasizes the potentially positive aspects of certain forms of conflict. It accepts a permanent place for such conflict in the political sphere, but seeks to show how individuals might accept and channel this conflict positively. Agonists are especially concerned with debates about democracy, and the role that conflict plays in different conceptions of it. The agonistic tradition to democracy is often referred to as agonistic pluralism. A related political concept is that of countervailing power. Beyond the realm of the political, agonistic frameworks have similarly been utilized in broader cultural critiques of hegemony and domination, as well as in literary and science fiction.
Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left is a collaborative book by the political theorists Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Žižek published in 2000.
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics is a 1985 work of political theory in the post-Marxist tradition by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Developing several sharp divergences from the tenets of canonical Marxist thought, the authors begin by tracing historically varied discursive constitutions of class, political identity, and social self-understanding, and then tie these to the contemporary importance of hegemony as a destabilized analytic which avoids the traps of various procedures Mouffe and Laclau feel constitute a foundational flaw in Marxist thought: essentializations of class identity, the use of a priori interpretative paradigms with respect to history and contextualization, the privileging of the base/superstructure binary above other explicative models.
Radical democracy is a type of democracy that advocates the radical extension of equality and liberty. Radical democracy is concerned with a radical extension of equality and freedom, following the idea that democracy is an unfinished, inclusive, continuous and reflexive process.
Post-politics refers to the critique of the emergence, in the post-Cold War period, of a politics of consensus on a global scale: the dissolution of the Eastern Communist bloc following the collapse of the Berlin Wall instituted a promise for post-ideological consensus. The political development in post-communist countries went two different directions depending on the approach each of them take on dealing with the communist party members. Active decommunisation process took place in Eastern European states which later joined EU. While in Russia and majority of former USSR republics communists became one of many political parties on equal grounds.
Yannis Stavrakakis is a Greek–British political theorist. A member of the Essex School of discourse analysis, he is mainly known for his explorations of the importance of psychoanalytic theory for contemporary political and cultural analysis and for his discourse studies on populism.
Aletta Norval is a South African born political theorist. As of 2019 she is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) at Anglia Ruskin University. A prominent member of the Essex School of discourse analysis, she is mainly known for her deconstructionist analysis of Apartheid discourse, for her methodological contributions to discourse analysis and for her work on decentred, democratic and poststructuralist political theory. Her other research interests include feminist theory, South-African politics, ethnicity and the politics of race. More recently, she has worked on biometrics, focussing on issues of citizen consent to identity management techniques.
The Democratic Paradox is a collection of essays by the Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe, published in 2000 by Verso Books. The essays offer further discussion of the concept of radical democracy that Mouffe explored in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, co-authored by Ernesto Laclau. In this collection, Mouffe deals with the specific conflicts between the post-Marxist democratic theory that she and Laclau theorized in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy and the competing democratic theories proposed by Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls. Verso's UK blog characterizes The Democratic Paradox as Mouffe's most accessible review of her perspectives on radical democracy.
Post-Marxism is a perspective in critical social theory which radically reinterprets Marxism, countering its association with economism, historical determinism, anti-humanism, and class reductionism, whilst remaining committed to the construction of socialism. Most notably, post-Marxists are anti-essentialist, rejecting the primacy of class struggle, and instead focus on building radical democracy. Post-Marxism can be considered a synthesis of post-structuralist frameworks and neo-Marxist analysis, in response to the decline of the New Left after the protests of 1968.
Political subjectivity is a term used to indicate the deeply embedded nature of subjectivity and subjective experience in a socially constructed system of power and meaning. The notion of political subjectivity is an emerging idea in social sciences and humanities. In some sense the term political subjectivity reflects the converging point of a number of traditionally distinct disciplinary lines of investigation, such as philosophy, anthropology, political theory, and psychoanalytic theory. Above all, the current conceptualization of political subjectivity has become possible due to a fundamental shift in humanities and social sciences during the 20th century, commonly known as the linguistic turn.