The philosopher and the Political Activist

Abstract

Ernesto Laclau was the philosopher whose theoretical intervention made a difference: it opened a whole path to a new kind of emancipationist thought that reoriented the political leftist position. His text, written together with Chantal Mouffe –Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democratic Politics first published in English in 1985–, gave birth to what has been known as Post-Marxism. Hegemony was crucial for the left because it was against the overwhelming conservative current which was delighted celebrating the failure of the socialist project and with it the unsuccessfulness of the Marxist theory. In an enormous gesture –that could be interpreted as a work over their Marxist heritage– they deconstruted Marxist theory in such a vast way that they ended up disintegrating its foundations. However, they persisted in the idea of social change and antagonism but this time without any possibility of reaching a dialectical resolution.