Analytical mediations in the work of Ernesto Laclau: A critical reinterpretation from political anthropology

Abstract

This work aims to link some of the proposals of Ernesto Laclau -especially the idea of discursive constitution of the social, the emergence of political subjects and the analysis of hegemonic operations – within approaches in political anthropology. The primary purpose is to respond to the common critic to poststructuralist or post-Marxist approaches on the abstraction of their categories and the lack of more specific mediations for the study of social phenomena. In this case we will try, on one hand, to identify possible interpretation frameworks from the relationship between laclausian theory and political anthropology, and on the other, criticize and deepen different concepts in Laclau’s work from the relationship between cultural and political dynamics.