Ernesto Laclau reading Michel Foucault : Foucault as a target for hegemony

Abstract

In contrast to the tendency of other presently celebrated post-structuralist intellectuals, such as Giorgio Agamben and up to a certain extent Judith Butler, who make persistent efforts to support their work through the provision of frequent references to the work of Michel Foucault, Ernesto Laclau, the first popular post-structuralist theorist on British soil, opted to provide only a few references to Foucault, which actually were not always equally approbatory of the latter’s work. By drawing attention to these few references, this article aims to thematize Laclau’s relationship with Foucault as a quite interesting case for the understanding of present-day flows in the exchange of ideas of contemporary intellectual life. In these respects, the article begins with a brief presentation of the methodological framework of our work. Subsequently, we focus on the relevant part of Laclau’s work by dividing it into two chronological periods, whereas the article ends up with the elaboration of a few more general conclusions.