Speculating Without Hedging

What Marxian political economy can offer Laclauian discourse theory

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12877005
AutoresBeverley Best (0000-0002-5285-9701, Concordia University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2014
Volumen11
Número3
Páginas272-287
Fecha de publicación2014-05-15
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCritical Discourse Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1740-5904 • E-ISSN: 1740-5912
EditorialRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17405904.2014.915861
OpenAlexW1541391498
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas3
Referencias citadas6

For Laclauian discourse theory, Marx's critical political economy posits an intolerably speculative thesis: in the capitalist formation, the substance of value is abstract labour, and thereby unfurls an entire world history. Such unequivocal and emphatic positing of a suprasensible sociality – speculating without hedging – is awkward and messy (it speaks the awkwardness of the appearance-essence formulation, the indeterminable messiness of some determinable ‘real’ content taking a certain form), and Laclauian discourse theory seeks to turn Marxian contradictions back into antinomies. The following discussion revisits the grounds on which Laclauian discourse theory has dismissed Marxian political economy and offers an alternative characterization of the latter, one that opens up the possibility of understanding the two analytical approaches as compatible and even as mutually augmenting in the sense that each approach picks up the threads of analysis that lie at the conceptual horizon of the other

Critical theory · Economics · Epistemology · Neoclassical economics · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Sociality · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics