Taking Laclau beyond Laclau

In Parts I and II of our investigation I have consistently distinguished between two versions of political ontology. In the case of the ‘onto-logics’ of politics – which, in Laclau, is called hegemony and comprises a general theory of signification – the concept of antagonism has a particular function in any process of signification: it allows for the articulation of differences into a chain of equivalence by providing them with a common negative outside. While Laclau describes, with great intellectual clarity and elegance, the laws of discourse and hegemony, he was hesitant to draw the ontological consequences. But these consequences are quite obvious. If his discourse theory amounts to a political theory of signification, rather than just a theory of political signification, then antagonism is involved, to some degree, in the stabilisation (and dislocation) of any meaning – no matter whether political or social. And if, as Laclau presumes (NR 100–3), all social being is discursively structured, then, given his theory of signification, antagonism must assume ontological status with regard to all social being. But we do not need to engage with Laclau's theory of discourse in order to arrive at this conclusion. Analogous consequences can be drawn from Laclau's theory of sedimentation and reactivation as presented in Chapter 4. If all things social are instituted politically (i.e. by the political), and if the moments of institution continue reverberating throughout the instituted – by making social institutions ‘tremble’ – no social being will remain untouched by antagonism. As soon as this point is accepted, we are forced to move beyond Laclau's political ‘onto-logic’. We have to turn our view towards an ontology of the political. The latter exceeds any theory concerned with the symbolic laws of discourse or political articulation. What will be at stake is the political nature of social being eo ipso. We have thus to approach, as far as it is possible, antagonism as antagonism, the ground as ground. But is that a feasible undertaking? In order to answer this question we need to reflect on the status of ontology as ontology – that is to say, we have to determine the very status of thinking.