Dialectic and social heterogeneity in Ernesto Laclau

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Dialectic and social heterogeneity in Ernesto Laclau © Author, 2020 Published version Mihkelsaar, Janar Mihkelsaar, J. (2020). Dialectic and social heterogeneity in Ernesto Laclau. Trames: Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 24(4), 533-548. https://doi.org/10.3176/tr.2020.4.04 2020 TRAMES, 2020, 24(74/69), 4, 533–548 DIALECTIC AND SOCIAL HETEROGENEITY IN ERNESTO LACLAU Janar Mihkelsaar University of Jyväskylä Abstract. The present article aims to examine critically Laclau’s claim that the trend toward social heterogenization revokes the Dialectic, or, more specifically, the clear and strict line of demarcation between what falls within the Dialectic and what falls outside of it. Polemicizing with the assumption of this reading, I argue that the appearance of a radical heterogeneity rather exposes the undecidability of relations between the Dialectic and what is a heterogeneity. To undergo the experience of this relation means not only to confront something that dislocates the Dialectic, but also what makes it what it is. The concrete determination of this limit relation is precisely what is at stake in the populist construction of the people, the political articulation of a popular identity. Against this backdrop, I argue that it is not so much Laclau as Agamben who opens the possibility to think about a heterogeneity non-dialectically. Keywords: Agamben, dialectic, heterogeneity, homogeneity, Laclau, populism, relation DOI: https//doi.org/10.3176/tr.2020.4.04 1. Introduction When reading the works of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, one stumbles on an enigmatic figure of the lumpenproletariat, the very lowest segment of the proletariat associated with the set of figures such as vagabonds, nomads, prostitutes, petty criminals, and lazzaroni. From the world-historical perspective of the ‘class struggle’, the lumpen is denounced as an unfit, apathetic and unreliable ally, and because of that it is set outside of what is thinkable and sayable within the rational framework of dialectical materialism. Yet the philosophical and sociopolitical strategy of marginalization, which drives the totalizing logic of the Dialectic, runs aground when the (so-to-speak) ‘real’ interests and identity of the working class 534 Janar Mihkelsaar (including other classes) are not derivable from the logical contradictions of political economy. Then we have arrived at a point at which heterogeneity bursts forth at every corner and level of modern society, causing the greatest alarm and disgust. This trend toward growing fragmentation and globalization threatens to shatter the dialectical intelligibility of the world. Marx faces precisely this uncanny threat in his The Eighteenth Brumaire (1852), which recounts a story of the events leading from the revolutionary overthrow of the Orleans monarchy in 1848 to Louis Bonaparte’s coup d’état in December 1851. Bonaparte is described as playing cunningly against each other highly diverse social groups and interests, such as the proletariat, the petite bourgeoisie, the republicans, the aristocrats, the big industrialists, and the peasants. In his bid for power, Bonaparte successfully mobilizes diverse social strata. In such a situation, as Peter Stallybrass argues in his essay “Marx and Heterogeneity,” Marx is forced “to look at the contingencies of class: class as an unstable yoking together, through political rhetoric, of heterogeneous groups” (Stallybrass 1990: 70; original emphasis). The main lesson to be learned from Bonaparte’s usurpation of the state-power is the primacy of contingency and indeterminacy with respect to economy. A political rhetoric, and not an economic logic, shapes the identity and interests of all classes and, ultimately, a social totality in general. More specifically, Stallybrass sees Marx’s exclusion of the lumpen “as a tactical maneuver to establish the dialectic,” as a tactical maneuver to restrict the heterogeneity internal to the heterogeneous category of the poor and, in such a way, to organize the collective identity of the proletariat as a revolutionary and collective agent (Stallybrass 1990: 82; original emphasis). However, the exact impact of the lumpen is more controversial than it appears at first glance, since it is not at all clear in what way the explosion of social heterogeneity affects the integrity and coherence – conceptual homogeneity – of the dialectical logic. In Revolution and Repetition (1977), for instance, Jeffrey Mehlman addresses the question of revolution in Marx’s political writings and French literature (Hugo, Balzac). In opposition to Stallybrass, Mehlman argues that the Dialectic breaks down when the transparent representation of the proletariat (and other classes) becomes opaque and precarious. Commenting on two opposing points of view, Ernesto Laclau acknowledges the constitutive role of heterogeneity in the moment of homogenization but, nonetheless, sides with Mehlman. For, when the process of social heterogenization can no longer be managed and delimited, there is nothing else to do but to conclude: “heterogeneity undoes dialectical totalization” (Laclau 2005: 263; my emphasis). However, the present article aims to argue that we do not necessarily have to decide whether the spectacle of social heterogeneity establishes or, inversely, terminates the dialectical intelligibility of the world. Both standpoints, taken separately, fail to hit the mark. To a certain degree, we may concede to the breakdown of the Dialectic, but not to conclude immediately upon it, insofar as a break in the issue does not have to be an absolute annulment. By drawing upon Laclau’s style of reasoning, I suggest interpreting the moment of disruption and that of establishment as complementing and re-enforcing one another. Such double reading is imaginable, on the condition 535Dialectic and social heterogeneity in Ernesto Laclau that the uncontrollable surge of social heterogeneity throws into question an objective relationship between what is a heterogeneous outside and what is homogeneous inside of dialectical mediations, and as a result, exposes the undecidablity of this relation. But, on the other hand, there arises the need of determining the undecidable. This determination is precisely what is at play in Laclau’s populist articulation of the ‘people.’ All in all, I believe, Laclau fails in thinking of heterogeneity non-dialectically, because it is not simply enough to oppose the static and fixed form of objective relation to the undecidability of relation. In the final section of this article, I argue that the question of a non-dialectical heterogeneity is a point or a ‘blind spot’ where the post-structural theory of a populist politics subverts itself and goes beyond itself. A testimony of this is Laclau’s concise essay “Bare Life or Social Indeterminacy?” that engages with Giorgio Agamben’s seminal work, Homo Sacer: Sovereign and Bare Life (1998). What Laclau’s critical reading misses, in my view, is that the enigmatic figure of homo sacer paves the path for the conceptualization of a nondialectical heterogeneity. 2. Relationship between the dialectic and a heterogeneous exteriority Throughout his writings, but especially in his On Populist Reason from 2005, Laclau holds a view that the trend towards the growth of social heterogeneity shatters the foundations of the Dialectic. In order to uphold the dialectical vision of a totality, Laclau maintains that it is required to establish and sustain the clear and strict line of demarcation between the homogeneous interiority of the Dialectic and what is heterogeneous to it. In the present section, I argue that this form of relation is an objective relation. The dialectical train of thought requires demarcations of what falls within the realm of the dialectical transitions (formally, a thesis-antithesis-synthesis structure) from what falls absolutely outside of it. The Dialectic, in spite of itself, rests on “the static assertion of a binary opposition”: the objective positivity of a homogeneous inside and that of a pure outside (Laclau 2005: 149). The movement of dialectical transitions toward the final reconciliation or synthesis of all contradictions asserts itself in opposition and over against the otherness of a non-dialectical outside in the figure of a heterogeneity. The figures of a heterogeneous other are marginal residues which (should) bear no relevance whatsoever to the conceptual homogeneity of dialectical mediations, the dialectical intelligibility of actuality. Examples are easy to come by. Take, for instance, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, where Hegel describes the historical unfolding of the world-spirit from the Orient to its final self-realization in the Occident. In the narration of such universal history, we come across ‘grey areas’ (e.g. Africa) that have no substantial significance for the self-assertion of reason and freedom. On the wayside of a historical and metaphysical people, there are the ‘people without history’ (Laclau 2005: 149, 148; see also Hegel: 1986: 129). 536 Janar Mihkelsaar Criticizing Hegel’s idealism, Marx delineates the contours of historical periods in accordance with their specific ‘mode of production’ (i.e. tribal, ancient, feudalism, capitalism) and corresponding ‘relations of production’ (i.e. the owners of the means of production and the sellers of labor-power). But ultimately, the intelligibility and cohesion of history is established and maintained in relation to the ‘parasitic’ scum of the working class, that is, from “the absolute ‘outsider’: the lumpenproletariat” (Laclau 2005: 144; my emphasis). The lumpen is initially taken to have a negligible and peripheral presence vis-à-vis the forward march of world history, defined by the class warfare between the labor and the capital. According to Laclau, Marx gives to the class struggle a dialectical explanation. “The dialectical explanation […] presupposes that if there is an antagonistic (that is, contradictory) relation between A and B, I have within the concept of A everything we need to know that it will be negated by B and only by B” (Laclau 2005: 148). Hence, the dialectical contradiction may be deduced purely from the “determinate negation” of A’s identity by B. Ideally, B is nothing more than non-A. Purely through a conceptual and rational analysis, we may ascertain that the propositional content of A is logically incompatible with B. This form of contradiction illustrates the relation of the capitalists and the workers (Laclau 2005: 149). Analytically, one can easily demonstrate that the conflict of interests necessarily follows from the predatory working of political economy. The identity of the proletariat exhausts itself in being the negative side, or ‘determinant negation,’ of the bourgeoisie’s aspiration to maximize profits and accumulate capital. And from capitalists’ desire to keep wages close to a subsistence level and to appropriate the ‘surplus-value,’ one may conclude in a logical manner that the workers cannot but resist their exploitation and, consequently, from engaging in the class war to put an end to injustice. These inner contradictions of capitalism are eventually reconciled dialectically into the higher stage of development – a communist society. In contrast to the esteemed productivity of the industrial workers, the lumpen is viewed as the underclass of a non-productive force, and for that reason it is excluded from the dialectical logic of historicity. Living by the wayside, the lumpen is a form of heterogeneous exteriority, with which there is no real possibility of compromise and cooperation. Given that it is expelled from the sphere of meaning and historicity, it is strictly speaking not representable, which is to say, it is excluded not only from the space of representation, but from the horizon of dialectical representation as such. And yet, the lumpen has a fixed reference and definition (e.g. non-productivity), because of which it is localizable, controllable, and governable (Laclau 2005: 144). This philosophico-political strategy of exclusion, if not annihilation, is necessary for maintaining and guaranteeing the intelligibility and integrity of the Dialectic. Overall, it is relevant to keep in mind that the binary relation between what is the homogeneous inside of the Dialectic and what is a heterogeneity is, according to Laclau, completely graspable in the absolute knowledge or the “scientific” explanations of dialectical materialism. What sustains the intelligibility and representability of the homogenous interiority of the Dialectic is the possibility to distinguish the positivity of an absolute inside from that of a heterogeneous outside. 537Dialectic and social heterogeneity in Ernesto Laclau This form of a pure heterogeneity is nothing but the reverse of the Dialectic. This static and fixed form of relationship is in essence an objective relation. 3. True generality of heterogeneity and social antagonism When asked to give a nominal definition of social heterogeneity, Laclau would initially associate it with an absolute exteriority to the order of representation as such (Laclau 2005: 140). But at a time when the complexity, diversity, and plurality of European societies grow to an unprecedented extent, it is more and more challenging, if not altogether impossible, to sustain the full intelligibility of an absolute inside vis-à-vis a pure outside. The rigidity of the conceptual determination of the lumpen, as already witnessed by Marx, starts to lose a fixed reference and meaning. In effect, the problematic of heterogeneity starts to show itself “in its true generality” (Laclau 2005: 151). The truth of this generality designates the extension of heterogeneity to the entire terrain of the social. The trend toward social heterogenization, Laclau suggests, is what began to gather pace from about the 1830s onward. The unstoppable overflow of heterogeneity undermined “the harmonious image of society,” where everyone in the social hierarchy of Europe, from the nobility to the peasants, were supposed to have their ‘natural’ place, corresponding obligations and liberties (Laclau 2005: 142). In Germany, multiple factors contributed to this process, e.g. “rapid population growth, emancipation from serfdom, enclosures, suppression of feudal distinctions in the towns, and so forth” (Laclau 2005: 142). In France, the complications of this trend came into view in the way Bonaparte cunningly lumped together a heterogeneous set of interests in order to seize and ensure power. That manner in which Bonaparte usurped political power and then ruled demonstrated that social identities and their corresponding interests cannot be simply inferred from the objectivity of the economic base. Heterogeneity, previously banished to a periphery, broke out into the center stage. In consequence, political thinking is forced to begin with the fact of heterogeneity which no ‘deep’ logic, no grand narrative, is able to cover or explain away. If so, the imminent challenge is to rethink the Marxist delineations of class struggle. In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Laclau (with Mouffe) proposes the poststructural theory of social antagonism. At the outset, two dominant conceptions are dismissed (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 122-127). Firstly, antagonism cannot be a ‘real opposition,’ in line with which a social division is modeled on the relation of real objects, for instance, of a negative and positive energy, nor are we dealing with a ‘logical contradiction,’ that is, with an ideal opposition of propositional contents, of ideal non-mundane objects. Following this line of reasoning, one is tempted to drive class struggle from the logical analysis of categories such as the seller and buyer of ‘labor’ (e.g. Laclau 2005: 83-93); however, neither a real opposition nor a contradiction is adequate for the task, because both are kinds of objective relations, that either between real or ideal realities. 538 Janar Mihkelsaar In that respect, both standpoints are inadequate, for the reason that social antagonism is for Laclau something that is not inherent to the positivity of reality or ideality, but carved out in the heterogeneous field of unfulfilled demands (Laclau 2005: 149). The difficulty of comprehending and identifying an antagonistic frontier is a part of the difficulty of identifying and delimiting the idea of the people. No matter how a popular identity is determined and represented, it always falls short of itself in the sense that it is always less or more than it is imagined to be. People are just too diverse, too plural, too fragmented, too opaque – too heterogeneous. Behind every already established people lurk other peoples who throw into question a unitary political representation and identity. Once social heterogeneity becomes irreducible, it is no longer possible to distinguish clearly and distinctively the proletariat from the lumpen. It hence becomes apparent that an inside cannot be separated clearly and distinctively from an outside. Cohesive identity yields to the heterogeneous plurality of individuals, which threatens to do away with the transparency of a political representation and the people (Laclau 2005: 149-152). Lalcau sums up the implications of this process thus: “If the heterogeneous excess can be contained within certain limits, reduced to a marginal presence, the dialectical vision of a unified history can be maintained” (Laclau 2005: 143). But if the opposite is the case, meaning, if it is no longer possible to ignore the overwhelming presence of a heterogeneity and fix objectively the inside-outside relation, the intelligibility of the grand Dialectic yields to disintegration, or, alternatively, it can be sustained only through ad hoc modifications like Syndicalism. In order to ascertain whether the Dialectic immediately fades away without any trace left behind, or as another option, whether it survives the premature proclamation of its death, I think it is necessary to probe further into what Laclau names the undecidability of a radical heterogeneity. 4. Undecidability, or a radical heterogeneity In his On Populist Reason, Laclau thinks of social heterogeneity in the sense of ‘the real’ (Laclau 2005: 108, 152-154; see more: Norval 2004, Thomassen, 2005, Marchart 2005, Biglieri and Perelló 2011). So considered, heterogeneity does not refer to empirical diversity and multiplicity. There is more to it than that. What is at issue here is what is called a ‘radical heterogeneity,’ which points to the noncoincidence of objectivity and the reciprocal subversions of the heterogeneous and the homogeneous. This kind of mutual implication can also be reformulated as follows: a radical heterogeneity is the condition of possibility and, concurrently, impossibility for the constitution of a communal identity and representation. This section aims to elucidate this idea. The question is: How the collective identity of the people is represented and shaped in the heterogeneous terrain of the social? To sketch a reply which Laclau gives to this problem, I examine how the proletariat attends and masters heterogeneity that ‘inhabits the very heart of a homogenous space’ (Laclau 2005: 152; my emphasis). In the early nineteenth century, for instance, the heterogeneous notion of the poor 539Dialectic and social heterogeneity in Ernesto Laclau lacked ‘any stable social ascription,’ since, in a social imagination at that point in time, poverty was associated with a wide variety of abject figures, from the nomads to literati, from the rabble to lazzaroni (Laclau 2005: 143; Stallybrass 1990: 83). Against this diverse background of human wretchedness, Marx came to identify the class of classes – the industrial proletariat. By way of reducing and confining heterogeneity in the camp of the poor, the proletariat came to recognize and form itself as a distinctive class with a world-historical mission. The proletariat emerged as a revolutionary subject from the womb of incommensurable multiplicity (Laclau 2005: 143). More generally, for political representation and identification to be possible, a people have to be capable of drawing its collective identity by means of delimiting and repressing the differential heterogeneity of the social terrain. In the semantic field of many European languages, for instance, the term ‘the people’ is in itself a heterogeneous concept, signifying both the socio-political whole and the excluded (e.g. ‘ordinary people’). And if the identity of a people is to be identified and represented, it must be carved out negatively in relation to what it should not be. Whichever face this negative form of relation takes, it usually refers to a heterogeneous other. Whether it is the plebs, the multitude, the popolo minute, the lumpen, the Pöbel, it is always inherently an integral part of society. The people carries heterogeneity inside itself as something in relation to which it has to establish and secure its own identity. In light of this sociopolitical strategy of a self-institution, heterogeneity is the condition of possibility for the constitution of a popular identity, a social totality in general. But this very same heterogeneity refers simultaneously to the impossibility of what Laclau names ‘communitarian fullness,’ a unitary and transparent representation (Laclau 2005: 83-93). This is so, because the bid for mastery of oneself runs up against the limits that are internal to the attempts of homogenization. As long as there are heterogeneous elements that, for one reason or another, cannot be, or resist being, incorporated into the symbolic order of a political representation, the positivity of the people is constantly forced to come to terms with the negativity of an irreducible heterogeneity, that is, with the particularistic character of all identities and demands, on the basis of which it not only shapes itself, but also needs to re-pose itself constantly anew. No matter how the people signifies itself, it is not possible to negate or do away with heterogeneity conclusively. What is repressed is prone to return, and in so doing, disarticulate an already established identity (Laclau 2005: 153). That is why the people is not a subject that has one indivisible and unified voice (Laclau 2005: 152). The people is instead always re-presented as that what is absent in its substance. The presence of what is absent cannot be explained away with the empirical complexity of social relations or the cognitive incomprehensibility of a social totality. The mismatch between the orders of a representing and a represented is not accidental or caused by ill will or incompetence on the part of leaders; rather, according to Laclau, non-coincidence is a part of the ontological structure of political representation and collective identification as such (e.g. Laclau 2005: 87-88). The presence of heterogeneous elements objectifies the non-identity of the people. 540 Janar Mihkelsaar To undergo the experience of a radical heterogeneity means to run up against the condition of (im)possibility for the popular identity and representation of a people. This line of reasoning makes an outside-inside dynamic much more difficult. Viewed from within, the relation of the people to heterogeneity is a relation to what appears to be exterior to the space of a political representation. But in the other, opposite view, a heterogeneity presents itself as what inhabits the very intimate interiority of social space. What is carried inside is thus projected to an outside. Or, put paradoxically, a radical heterogeneity is not only something that is exterior to the space of the social, but also that subverts from within the very interiority of a homogenous society. The uncanny experience of a radical heterogeneity exposes “the undecidability between the homogenous and the heterogeneous or, in our example, between the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat” (Laclau 2005: 153). The undecidability of this relation is precisely what is at stake in the self-representation and -identification of a people. Insofar as the interplay of reciprocal subversion of the homogenous and the heterogeneous is constitutive and, in the last instance, undecidable, it puts into question the assumption that an outside-inside relationship is objectively fixed and comprehensible in advance. That is why, Laclau maintains, the Dialectic enters into a phase of disintegration, for example, because there is no predestined guarantee for the long-term effectiveness of a Marxist militant praxis, leading toward the triumph of communism. What exactly comes into the view in the undecidability of a radical heterogeneity is that there is no intellectual intuition or discursive knowledge on the basis of which to grasp and present the full intelligibility and objectivity of the relation between the homogeneity of dialectical transitions and what is heterogeneous to it. At that moment when the experience of a radical undecidability presents itself as what is irreducible and beyond the reach of control, the dialectic projects of various character collapse. The next section tackles the problem of whether this must necessarily be the case. 5. At the limits of a dialectical totalization If, as discussed above, the undecidability of a radical heterogeneity reveals the conditions of im-possibility for the positivity of the people, it seems the objective intelligibility of an inside-outside relation is irretrievably lost, and, as a result, a dialectical totalization undoes itself irretrievably. The key question is whether we should recap, like Laclau: ‘Forget Hegel’ (Laclau 2005: 148). To a certain extent, we may concede to this assessment, but in my view such outright reluctance towards the idea of the Dialectic is somewhat perplexing as, throughout his writings, Laclau makes a double gesture: firstly, he registers the moment of a disruption or ‘dislocation,’ but then takes a step back modestly, evading the equation of the disruption with a nihilist annihilation. The moment of disruption is thereby complemented and interlinked with that of re-establishment. Many examples illustrate this line of argumentation. Of these, the most wellknown is probably a thesis about ‘the impossibility of society,’ which does not mean 547Dialectic and social heterogeneity in Ernesto Laclau factum no longer in the form of a relation” (Agamben 1998: 60; my emphasis). The challenge before us today is therefore not to articulate the limit relation between the ontic and the ontological, the exterior and the interior, the heterogeneous and the homogeneous; rather, it is necessary to think the ontico-ontological difference and the social bond as beyond the limit form of relation. Among other things, I maintain that ‘beyond the relation’ means beyond the Dialectic and, furthermore, beyond the spectral reiteration of the Dialectic, as it takes place in the post-structural conception of populism. What Agamben aims to do in his project is to go beyond both the pure heterogeneity of the grand Dialectic and beyond the heterogeneity of an underdog. Heterogeneity, when considered strictly non-dialectically, does not put in motion the populist articulation of the mobile frontier between the proletariat and the lumpen, which is to say, Laclau’s naming of the ‘people.’ When faced with the appearance of homo sacer, we witness the exhaustion of both sovereign decision and political articulation, the consummation of both class struggle and the mobile antagonistic frontier of ‘society.’ To strive toward thinking of the politico-social factum beyond the form of relation means to render not only the apparatus of sovereignty but also the populist naming of the people ‘inoperative’ (Agamben 1998: 61-62). In this manner, Agamben calls into question the very form of relation between the Dialectic and what is heterogeneous to it. The idea of inoperativity strives to pave the path toward a heterogeneity that is not trapped within the schemas of dialectical totalization and its spectral remnants. Acknowledgements This research was supported by the KONE Foundation. Address: Janar Mihkelsaar University of Jyväskylä Department of Social sciences and Philosophy, Unit of Political Science Keskussairaalantie 2, PO Box 35 E-mail: janar[email protected] Tel.: +372 5555 9292 References Giorgio A. (1998) Homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Biglieri P. and G. Perelló (2011) “The names of the real in Laclau’s theory: antagonism, dislocation and heterogeneity”. Filozofski vestnik 32, 2, 47–64. Hegel, G. W. F. (1986) Vorlesung über die Philosophie der Geschichte. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Kitus, A. (2019) “The theory of hegemony: Laclau’s path not taken”. Philosophy & Social Criticism November, 1–19. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453719889987 548 Janar Mihkelsaar Laclau, E. and C. Mouffe (1985) Hegemony and socialist strategy: towards a radical democratic politics. London: Verso. Laclau, E. (1990) New reflections on the revolution of our time. London: Verso. Laclau, E. (1996) Emancipation(s). London: Verso. Laclau, E. and L. Zac (1994) “Minding the gap: the subject of politics”. In: E. Laclau, ed. The making of political identities, 11–39. London: Verso. Laclau, E. (2005) On populist reason. London: Verso. Laclau, E. (2014) The rhetorical foundations of society. London: Verso. Lipping, J. (2016) “The hedgehog from the pampas: Ernesto Laclau and the impossibility of society”. European Political Science 15, 271–276. Marchart, O. (2005) “In the name of the people: populist reason and the subject of the political”. Diacritics 35, 3, 3–19. Mehlman, J. (1977) Revolution and repetition: Marx/Hugo/Balzac. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mihkelsaar, J. (2015) “Towards a rethinking of Laclau and Mouffe’s conception of social antagonisms: Agamben’s critique of relation”. Philosophy Today 59, 3, 409–427. Nancy, J.-L. (2002) Hegel: the restlessness of the negative. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Norval, A. (2004) “Hegemony after deconstruction: the consequences of undecidability”. Journal of Political Ideologies 9, 2, 139–157. Selg, P. and A. Ventsel (2020) Introducing relational political analysis: political semiotics as a theory and method. London: Palgrave. Stallybrass, P. (1990) “Marx and heterogeneity: thinking the lumpenproletariat”. Representations 31, 69–95. Thomassen, L. (2005) “Antagonism, hegemony and ideology after heterogeneity”. Journal of Political Ideologies 10, 3, 289–309. Žižek, S. (1990) “Beyond discourse-analysis”. In E. Laclau New reflections on the revolution of our time, 249–260. London: Verso.