The article revisits the theory of hegemony of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and shows how a normative injunction, which according to Laclau is not compatible with the hegemonic logic, is not only possible but a necessary condition for hegemony to function. The article claims that the path to demonstrate this involves rethinking the relationship between the theory of hegemony and Derridean deconstruction. Following criticisms that the theory of hegemony overlooks the aporetic nature of Derridean undecidability that it nevertheless relies (...) upon, the hegemonic logic is submitted to a deconstructive reading, which reveals an internal aporia in it. It is further argued that the unaccounted aporia in the logic of hegemony explains the theory’s inability to satisfactorily account for its essential theoretical underpinning, the radical exclusion. However, the article also demonstrates that the aporia does not destroy hegemonic logic but, instead, supplements it by a normative dimension, by a demand of opening to the other as other. (shrink)

The central question concerning the future of masculinity is whether the current matrix of distributions of roles and status, praxes and practices, will remain intact or whether a shift to a new configuration will occur. This essay briefly examines thinking on masculinity in two French attempts to theorize the future of relations between men and women: that of Auguste Comte, at the beginning of sociology, and Jean Baudrillard at the end of sociology. Both have, in their time, predicted radical gender (...) futures. The essay considers these theories against changes in social structures and the effectivity social movements. (shrink)

This thesis investigates a theoretical response to the question of what constitutes the political implications of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. This thesis, working within the tradition of critical and cultural theory, undertakes a sustained engagement with the works of Jacques Derrida to theorise the traditions, norms, and practices that inform a response to an event such as the crisis of 2008. This thesis works with his proposals that: the spectre of its limitations haunts politics; that this has led to (...) the ‘deconstruction’ of the meaning of politics through complex textual frameworks; and that this dynamic leads to a tension between the arrival of new political possibilities on the one hand and new forms of political sovereignty on the other. After examining the significance of Derrida’s approach and secondary literature debating its interpretation, this thesis deconstructs the political implications of the crisis from politics in the traditional sense of the nationstate, the textual politics of scholarship, and finally the politics of the media, the domain, I argue, that incorporates the most discrete and sophisticated forms of sovereign decision-making. Finally, this thesis opens up its findings to secondary literature that suggest contrasting arguments. (shrink)