Hegemony And The Act Of ”Traversing The Fantasy“: Reaffirmation Of The Concept Of Ideology In The Works Of Laclau, Mouffe And Žižek

Abstract

This paper discusses the modalities of reaffirmation of the concept of ideology in the works of Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe and Slavoj Žižek. Such “reaffirmation” is constituted as a transition from the epistemological to the ontological level of theorizing about ideology. The aim is to point out towards mutual differences with respect to the axis of ideology – nonideology, and the rearticulation of the concept of “false consciousness”. Both approaches, Laclau and Mouffe’s on the one hand, and Žižek’s on the other, are oriented towards critical detachment from Althusser’s theoretical edifice and his concepts of interpellation and ideological state apparatuses. Zizek’s position aims at reinterpreting the Marxist paradigm from a Lacanian-Hegelian perspective. Laclau and Mouffe enforce the “deconstructive” potentials of Gramscian legacy in order to rearticulate the “dead ends” of Marxism through the poststructuralist framework.