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From domination to emancipation and freedom: reading Ernesto Laclau's post-Marxism in conjunction with Philip Pettit's neo-republicanism

Khan, Gulshan

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Abstract

© Bristol University Press 2019. In this paper, I bring Ernesto Laclau’s post-Marxist approach into conversation with the analytical thinker Philip Pettit, who has developed an influential neo-republican conception of freedom as ‘non-domination’. Both thinkers aim to reconfigure power and domination towards more democratic and egalitarian relations and I evaluate the political implications of their respective conceptions of domination/non-domination, emancipation and freedom. I show that despite these common points of reference, the two authors exhibit considerable differences which manifest in their respective conceptions of structure and agency. In the opening section, I compare Laclau’s and Pettit’s respective conceptions of ‘domination’ where I highlight the differences between them in two alternate readings of Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House. In the second section, I examine their respective understandings of ‘emancipation’ and ‘freedom’, and I demonstrate that Pettit does not model his conception of freedom as non-domination on the idea of emancipation. This stands in contrast to Laclau, for whom emancipation remains the focal point of political struggle, despite formal equality, and who maintains the idea of the possibility of a more radical transformation in the underlying structures of society. In the final section, I consider Laclau’s and Pettit’s alternative conceptions of politics where both thinkers place a premium on democratic contest in challenging and overturning arbitrary power. I show that for Pettit political freedom is a mode of contestability within the established institutions, while Laclau’s notions of emancipation and freedom functions at the level of competing hegemonic projects, and this facilitates a form of political struggle that might transcend the existing regime to instantiate a new institutional order. I conclude by amalgamating the respective strengths of both thinkers to provide a multi-layered analysis of contemporary forms of domination to better aid our understanding about the kinds of struggle needed to contest them.

Citation

Khan, G. (2019). From domination to emancipation and freedom: reading Ernesto Laclau's post-Marxism in conjunction with Philip Pettit's neo-republicanism. Global Discourse / Global Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Current Affairs and Applied Contemporary Thought, 9(2), 391-409. https://doi.org/10.1332/204378919X15526540593660

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Aug 2, 2018
Online Publication Date Apr 1, 2019
Publication Date Apr 1, 2019
Deposit Date Aug 3, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Global Discourse
Print ISSN 2326-9995
Electronic ISSN 2043-7897
Publisher Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 9
Issue 2
Pages 391-409
DOI https://doi.org/10.1332/204378919X15526540593660
Keywords Political Science and International Relations; Sociology and Political Science
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/925257
Publisher URL https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bup/gd/2019/00000009/00000002/art00012
Additional Information This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Global Discourse: An interdisciplinary journal of current affairs on 01/04/2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1332/204378919X15526540593660

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