Ernesto Laclau

Our aim has been the exact opposite: to focus on certain discursive categories which, at first sight, appeared to be privileged condensation-points for many aspects of the crisis; and to unravel the possible meaning of a history in the various facets of this multiple refraction.

guiding thread of our analysis has been the transformations in the concept of hegemony, considered as a discursive surface and fundamental nodal point of Marxist political theorization. Our principal conclusion is that behind the concept of ‘hegemony’ lies hidden something more than a type of political relation complementary to the basic categories of Marxist theory.

the expansion and determination of the social logic implicit in the concept of ‘hegemony’ – in a direction that goes far beyond Gramsci – will provide us with an anchorage from which contemporary social struggles are thinkable in their specificity, as well as permitting us to outline a new politics for the Left based upon the project of a radical democracy.

there is not one discourse and one system of categories through which the ‘real’ might speak without mediations.

Just as the era of normative epistemologies has come to an end, so too has the era of universal discourses.

Marxism is one of the traditions through which it becomes possible to formulate this new conception of politics

‘hegemony’ becomes the key concept in understanding the very unity existing in a concrete social formation.