Introduction

I have what I consider to be a long relationship with Laclau and Mouffe. It began in the early 2000s when I embarked on a sustained engagement with the second edition of Hegemony and socialist strategy (hereafter HSS), and with Mouffe’s subsequent solo work. I found both to be extremely useful for making a critique of a Habermasian consensus theory that dominated planning thought back then (for example, Innes, 1995; Forester, 1999). But as my relationship with Laclau and Mouffe developed, they slowly became central to my thinking about democracy, a political idea that is now at the very core of my work.

It is ironic, then, that as I began thinking about this chapter, I realised that I did not remember very well what their idea of democracy was. Their way of conceiving of democracy, what they call a ‘radical and plural democracy’ (Laclau and Mouffe, 2000: xv), is not in the front of my mind anymore. That is partly due to age and to my failing memory, but it is more because other writers have stepped forward to occupy my attention when I think about democracy – writers like Rancière, Hardt and Negri, Lefebvre, Castoriadis, Virno, and Butler – and Laclau and Mouffe have, as a result, faded into the background.

And so in a way this chapter is an effort on my part to investigate why that shift occurred, why I do not think about Laclau and Mouffe much anymore when I think about democracy. I think an important part of the reason can be traced to their idea of hegemony, and to their claim that hegemony and democracy must be balanced, or held in tension. I will try to explain why I have trouble with that claim below. But to just sum it up here: I want to move in the direction of democracy, and away from hegemony. You could say that, in a sense, the content of Laclau and Mouffe’s politics are to ‘blame’ for them falling off my radar. But I want to be careful here. This chapter is not really the story of how my work moved beyond their outdated ideas.