Abstract:
Two central debates about power converged in debate around the work of
Laclau and Mouffe. On the one hand, they were key figures in Western
Marxism. responsible for reconceptualizing its central concept - hegemony.
On the other hand, they did so in a way that seemed to
capitulate to the anti-Marxist politics of Foucault. Foucault is unable to
find any place for error or falsehood. Without a correct means for
identifying the fallacies of consciousness there can be no question of
politics being bounded by truth and falsehood by real and false interests,
by full and occluded knowledge. Laclau and Mouffe dissolve the
boundaries defining the critical radical project of power in Western
Marxism. Once the sovereignty of consciousness is cast in terms of
popular consumer preferences rather than radical intellectual
preferences, the central radical debates about power become evident as a
matter of the distaste of elites.
