Hegemonic Rearticulation A Politics of the Particular

Date of Award

2005

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Flakne, April

Keywords

Hegemony, Ideology, Reform

Area of Concentration

Humanities

Abstract

The purpose of this project is to examine the limitations on social agency experienced by citizen-subjects in the democratic polity. Reform concerning marginalized groups in traditional liberal democratic polities occurs in a terrain of inclusion/exclusion delimited by normative constraints. Existing conceptions of citizenship and equality cause reforms to take the form of coopting, reproducing the dominant ideology and thus upholding the status quo. In the first chapter, Althusser's ideology theory (informed by Lacan) explains both the proliferation of the sites of struggle in the various ISAs and the constitution of the social subject through interpellation, in which subjects are identified according to the Law of the Father. Yet because there are gaps in subjectivation through subjection (and an unstable hierarchy amongst ISAs), this misrecognition allows for the possibility of survival due to the psychic remainder and performativity. The positions taken up by the subject as described in Laclau and Mouffe's hegemony theory -- a theory of communal interaction encompassing both civic and political spheres -- explain the logic of group formation. As shown in the second chapter, collective wills seek to live out versions of the good life, but there are normative constraints which prohibit particular versions of happiness. This is because the Master-Signifier universal is devoid of content and must be filled in through a historically and contingently articulated political action. Antagonistic forces struggle to rearticulate the universal, and thus the meaning of equality. In the third chapter, we shall see through the examination of recent political issues that equality functions as a term organizing inclusions and exclusions, informing normative constraints. Thus some groups live in alterity. Arendt shows that the nation-state was formed under the assumption of a homogenous unity of citizens. According to Kymlicka, citizens share a common language and history. Yet this is not the present reality of nation-states. The current social sphere is composed of a plurality of subject positions. In the liberal democratic polity, groups with separate histories are treated differently, yet often in ways that neutralize diversity. Fundamental rights of self expression are censored in aspects of the public sphere when groups are perceived as threats to, or are threatened by, the status quo. Concessions and reparations made to these groups often simultaneously reproduce and transform the dominant ideology. By limiting notions of reform to those that aim to widen existing norms, the radical democratic project will face the same obstacles that have been faced by traditional liberal democracies, which is to say that even valuing social pluralism over possessive individualism will not transform current ideologies because we remain within the same socio-discursive terrain.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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