Works
Laclau's early work was influenced by Althusserian Marxism and focused on issues debated within Neo-Marxist circles in the 1970s, including the role of the state, the dynamics of capitalism beyond reductionist models, the importance of Gramsci's theory of hegemony, etc. Laclau's most important book is arguably Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, which he co-authored with Chantal Mouffe. Their thought is usually described as post-Marxist as they were both politically active in the social and student movements of the 1960s and thus tried to link new emerging political identities with a democratic socialist imaginary. They rejected Marxist economic determinism and the notion of class struggle being the only determining antagonism in society. Instead, on the basis of recognising the plurality of antagonisms operating in society, they put forward a project of "radical and plural democracy". In his more recent work and under the increasing influence of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, Laclau has returned to a topic preoccupying him from his early years, that of populism. His latest views were well reflected in an interview given to Intellectum journal in 2008.
Read more about this topic: Ernesto Laclau
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“In the works of man, everything is as poor as its author; vision is confined, means are limited, scope is restricted, movements are labored, and results are humdrum.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)
“I lay my eternal curse on whomsoever shall now or at any time hereafter make schoolbooks of my works and make me hated as Shakespeare is hated. My plays were not designed as instruments of torture. All the schools that lust after them get this answer, and will never get any other.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The slightest living thing answers a deeper need than all the works of man because it is transitory. It has an evanescence of life, or growth, or change: it passes, as we do, from one stage to the another, from darkness to darkness, into a distance where we, too, vanish out of sight. A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own travelling brotherhood.”
—Freya Stark (b. 1893–1993)