Post-Marxism

In “Post-Marxism Without Apologies,” Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe investigate and critique Marxism through a metaphysical lens. Throughout the article, many philosophical theories are brought up and are applied as a tool of analysis. Also, by bringing the political ideas of Norman Geras into the article, Laclau and Mouffe are able to set up the argument that Marxism must be analyzed through a philosophical lens – in addition to the political lens – in order to assess its own limitation and reach its full potential. By critiquing Geras’ theories, Laclau and Mouffe are able to demonstrate the restrictions that the political lens may have, and thus, they make the argument that discourse theory “implies, by asserting the radical historicity of being and therefore the purely human nature of truth, the commitment to show the world for what it is: an entirely social construction of human beings which is not grounded on any metaphysical ‘necessity’ external to it – neither God, nor ‘essential forms’, nor the ‘necessary laws of history.’

The idea of “discourse” seems to compare to compare to Bazerman’s idea of “genre” and “speech act,” and also to Althusser’s “ideology.” Discourse is described as the “systematic set of relations” that is socially constructed and is used “to emphasize the fact that every social configuration is meaningful” (144-145). Like a speech act, discourse combines the “linguistic” and the “extra-linguistic” in a way that means something to both the auditor and the listener. In his theories, Althusser describes “ideology” as a system of representations that people use to explain real conditions, and also as a social construction. Discourse – as it is described by Laclau and Mouffe – is nearly identical to Althusser’s concept of ideology, since they are both are social constructs with the purpose of giving meaning to objects.

Personally, I found this reading to be very dense and hard to understand. Though I find philosophical theories to be very interesting, the ideas presented by Laclau and Mouffe were difficult to grasp because of the extensive terminology they include in their article. Additionally, since they were criticizing multiple criticisms, I had trouble following who was who and what was what. However, the main point seems to be that: Marxism must be looked upon from a perspective outside of the historical time period in which it was created in order to have significance in our world today. But then again, this article posed difficult to decipher, so I could be completely off mark.