Norval, Aproximaciones Al Análisis Del Discurso, en Inglés

The Things We Do with Words - Contemporary Approaches to the Analysis of Ideology
Author(s): Aletta J. Norval

Source: British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 30, No. 2, (Apr., 2000), pp. 313-346
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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B.J.Pol.S. 30, 313-346 Copyright? 2000 CambridgeUniversityPress
Printed in the United Kingdom
Review Article: The Things We Do with

Words - Contemporary Approaches to the
Analysis of Ideology
ALETTA J. NORVAL*
The making of society is the finding of common meanings and directions.

Raymond Williams1
Here I believe one's point of reference should not be to the great model of
language (langue) and signs, but to that of war and battle. The history which bears
and determines us has the form of a war rather than that of a language: relations
of power, not relations of meaning.
Michel Foucault2
It is frequently asserted that we live in a post-metaphysical world, a world devoid

of intrinsic meaning.3 This view of the world as disenchanted, as expressed in
the works of Weber, has been deepened and extended over the past century. In
the social sciences and the humanities, this deepening could be attributed, in
part, to the 'linguistic turn',4 a turn which is indicative not only of a renewed
* I wouldliketo thankJaneHindley,DavidHowarth,VickyRandall,AlbertWealeandYannis
Stavrakakisfor theirvaluablecommentson draftsof this article.I have presentedearlierversions
of it atthe 1998PragueColloquiumin PhilosophyandtheSocialSciences,as well as in thedoctoral
seminarof theIdeologyandDiscourseAnalysisGraduateProgramme, Department of Government,
Universityof Essex.
RaymondWilliams,'Cultureis Ordinary',in Ann GrayandJim McGuigan,eds, Studying
Culture(London:EdwardArnold,1993, 1st edn 1958),pp. 5-14 at p. 6.
2 MichelFoucault,Power/Knowledge, editedby ColinGordon(Brighton,Sussex:Harvester,
1980), p. 114.
3
Forcontemporary writers,suchas RichardRorty,thismeansthatwe mustrecognizethatwe
live in a post-philosophical
culturein whichthe most centralquestionis whetherwe can takethe
ubiquityof languageseriously,and whetherwe can 'see ourselvesas neverencounteringreality
except under a chosen description - as ... making worlds ratherthan finding them?' Richard Rorty,
Consequencesof Pragmatism(New York:HarvesterWheatsheaf,1991),p. xxxix (emphasisin the
original).This view standsin contrastto the views of theoristssuch as Habermas,for whom
post-metaphysical thinkingentailsa conceptof linguisticallyembodiedreasonwhichpreservesfrom
the metaphysicaltraditionthe idea of the rationalunderstanding of reality.Cf. WilliamRehg,
'Translator's Introduction', in Jiirgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a
Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), ix-xxxvii, esp.
pp. xii-xiv.
4 Whilstthe firstuse of the term
'linguisticturn'can be attributedto GustavBergmann,a
memberof the 'ViennaCircle',it is RichardRorty's 1967 volume,The LinguisticTurn:Recent
EssaysinPhilosophicalMethodthatpopularized its usage.ForRorty,thelinguisticturnencompasses
the influence of ordinary language analysis, including the writings of Wittgenstein, Austin and
314 NORVAL
interest in the nature and functions of language but also of the realization 'that
our language does not merely mirror the world, but is instead partially
constitutive of it.'5 While the salience of language for our self-understandings
is not a novel discovery, its full implications have been elaborated mainly in our
century.6 The turn to language in political theory is associated with writings
emanating from the late 1960s. Nevertheless, it has taken a good decade or so
longer for the consequences of a focus on the constitution and reconstitution of
reality to become the object of reflection in political and social theory in
general,7 and for the study of ideology in particular.8
If the theory of ideology9 has traditionally been intimately bound up with
metaphysical assumptions - ranging from systemic conceptions of society and
(F'note continued)
Strawson, as well as writings emanating from the phenomenological tradition, including Husserl,
Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur.
5
Terence Ball, 'Hobbes' Linguistic Turn', Polity, 17 (1985), 739-60, p. 740.
6 For a fuller discussion of this
argument, see Fred Dallmayr, Language and Politics (Notre
Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), esp. pp. 1-27. Dallmayr notes that the
prominence of language in contemporary philosophical discussions leaves room for a great variety
of emphases and approaches, both favourable and unfavourable. Indeed, he argues that the 'turn to
language is fragmented into a plethora of perspectives whose premises and objectives appearnot only
diverse but entirely incompatible' (Dallmayr, Language and Politics, p. 19). For an in-depth
discussion of two such contemporaryperspectives on the linguistic turnfrom the standpointof critical
theory, see James Bohman, 'Two Versions of the Linguistic Turn:Habermasand Poststructuralism',
in Maurizio Passerin D'Entreves and Seyla Benhabib, eds, Habermas and the Unfinished Project
of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), pp. 197-220. While these divergences no doubt are
important, it is possible to locate certain shared concerns amongst otherwise divergent approaches.
Most notable, in this respect, is the critique of a 'philosophy of consciousness'.
7
The earliest works in this respect were published in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. It was
only during the 1980s that these ideas penetratedthe field more generally. Some of the main writings
associated with the linguistic turn in political theory include: William E. Connolly, The Terms of
Political Discourse, 2nd edn (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1983); Dallmayr, Language and Politics;
John Dunn, 'The Identity of the History of Ideas', Philosophy, 63 (1968), 85-104; Hannah Fenichel
Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), and
Wittgensteinand Justice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972); J. G. A. Pocock, Politics,
Language and Time (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971); Michael J. Shapiro, Language
and Political Understanding (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); James Tully, ed., Meaning
and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988); and James Tully,
Strange Multiplicity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
8 One of the earliest texts which have tried to explore the consequences of developments in
semiotics for the study of ideology and subject formation is Rosalind Coward and John Ellis's
Language and Materialism (Boston, Mass: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977).
9 It is
obviously problematic to assert that there is a particularversion of 'older' conceptions
of ideology. Any political theorist familiar with the literatureon ideology would be perfectly aware
of, and frustratedby, the proliferation of different conceptions of ideology in both the Marxist and
the non-Marxist tradition. It is not, however, possible or plausible to review that vast literaturehere.
Nor would that serve a useful analytical purpose, since such an overview would merely contribute
yet another schema of classification. It is my view that it is much more useful and analytically
informative to focus attention on a number of importantcontemporaryattempts to rethink the terrain
of analysis traditionally associated with the theory of ideology, and to investigate what they may
contribute to our understanding of its multiple and complex dimensions.
Review Article: The Things We Do with Words 315
the laws governing it, to sovereign conceptions of subjectivity - the linguistic

turn could not but further put into question these deeply held assumptions.10 In
the light of that questioning, and since ideology has always been conceived of
in contrast to some order of truth or knowledge from which it would be possible
to discern its misleading and false character, it has to be asked whether it is
appropriate to continue to deploy the term in a context in which the dualism
between absolute truth and absolute falsity is questioned?" 1Would it not be more
appropriate to banish the term 'ideology' from our analytical vocabulary
altogether, rather than invest it with new and different post-metaphysical
meanings? Contemporary theoretical writings on the question of ideology offer
a resoundingly negative response to these questions.'2 Rather than rejecting the
term, thus running the risk of forgetting the problems associated with it, political
theorists have opted to reinscribe it on a different terrain.13 In so doing, they have
distanced themselves from the end of ideology thesis, popularized in the 1960s
by Seymour Martin Lipset and Daniel Bell, and have argued that our world is
deeply and inescapably ideological in character.'4
This process of reinscription entails both a repetition of earlier themes and
a certain alteration of them.'5 That is, these retheorizations of ideology both
10 These assumptions were, of course, most evident in traditionalMarxist accounts of ideology.

For a detailed discussion of these issues, see Michelle Barrett, The Politics of Truth (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1991), Part 1.
'' This is not to say that the writings under review simply reject all discussion of truthor endorse
relativist positions. Their interest in this respect may be more generally construed as an interest in
how truth claims come to be established, and in how frameworks of truthorganize what is sayable,
analysable and visible.
12 The main
writings on which I will concentrate in this review, in orderof discussion, are: David
Morrice, Philosophy, Science and Ideology in Political Thought (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996);
Michael Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); Emesto Laclau
and Chantal Mouffe's writings on the subject, especially Emesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe,
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985), and Emesto Laclau, New Reflections on
the Revolution of Our Time (London: Verso, 1990), as well as Emesto Laclau, 'The Death and
Resurrection of the Theory of Ideology', Journal of Political Ideologies; 1 (1996), 201-20; and
Emesto Laclau, 'Why do Empty Signifiers Matter to Politics?' in Emesto Laclau, Emancipation(s)
(London: Verso, 1996), pp. 36-46; Michael Rosen, On Voluntary Servitude: False Consciousness
and the Theory of Ideology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996); Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of
Ideology (London: Verso, 1989) and Slavoj Zizek (ed.), Mapping Ideology (London: Verso, 1994).
13 Methodologically this could be characterized as a deconstructive
strategy. Abandoning the
term 'ideology' and the problems associated with it would leave the terrainon which it was originally
conceived intact. In contrast, a deconstructive strategy would urge the political theorist to effect an
intervention in that terrain by investigating the questions and assumptions that gave rise to certain
answers in the firstplace. In terms of the theory of ideology, one would have to ask to what problems
that theory was a response, and whether it is possible to rethinkthe assumptions which informed the
positing of the very question, and the possible answers to it.
14
Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man (London: Heineman, 1960); Daniel Bell, The End of
Ideology (New York: Free Press, 1960).
15
Technically this process of reinscription is one of 'iteration'. Derrida introduced the idea of
iteration in his discussion of speech act theory. See Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc. abc, edited by
Gerald Graff (Evanston, III.:Northwestern University Press, 1988). For a detailed discussion of the
316 NORVAL
address old problems and recast the way those problems were first formulated
in a manner more attuned to our contemporary world. As a result, they have
moved beyond traditionalMarxist theories of ideology. This movement has not
taken the form of an argument that we live in a non-ideological world. Rather,
it has focused on the extent to which we find ourselves in a world where ideology
is a constantly present feature of social and political life.16 It is this emphasis
on the ubiquity of ideology, while also rethinking some of the assumptions
informing older characterizations of ideology, that is at the heart of
contemporary approaches to the question of ideology. And it is, perhaps
paradoxically, also this emphasis that allows one to establish bridges between
otherwise quite divergent approaches to the analysis of ideology.
The consequences of this interest in language for the study of ideologies -
whether expressed in terms of the formation of conventions, paradigms,
subjects, forms of representation or of the formation of symbolization more
generally - has to be spelled out.17 From this point of view, the task of the analyst
of ideologies will be to investigate those forms of representation, conventions,
political discourses and so on, which contribute to shaping our worlds, and our
understandings of them. To be amenable to systematic investigation, it has to
be assumed that these matters are sufficiently 'sedimented' or conventionalized
to display characteristics which, while not unchangeable have, nevertheless,
reached a certain degree of stability. In short, that they have become
decontested.18This review takes as its focus the study of ideology as an analysis
of such processes of decontestation. It aims to investigate the extent to which
ideologies can be fruitfully understood as combinations of decontested, or
naturalized, conceptual formations, practices and images for identification. This
focus on decontestation, while creating the possibility of establishing bridges
between approaches developed within quite different intellectual traditions
should not, however, be used to erase marked differences between them.
My aim here should be stated explicitly. It is to bring these approaches
into conversation with one another without sacrificing the specificity and
contribution of each. Four main contemporary approaches to the study
(F'note continued)
infrastructure of iterability, see Rudolphe Gasche, The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the
Philosophy of Reflection (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 212-17.
16
One may want to characterize such a world as post-ideological.
17
It is importantto note that this interest is not limited to language conceived in a narrow sense.
The authors under discussion, albeit in different ways, are interested in exploring the pragmatics of
language, its materiality and its forms of sedimentation, for the study of ideology.
18
The term 'decontestation' is drawn from Michael Freeden's morphological approach to the
analysis of ideologies. Freeden argues that ideologies, in attempting to cement the word-concept
relation, aim to 'decontest' the meanings of political concepts. That is, they aim to limit the range
of possible contestation aroundcentral political concepts. Indeed, he regardsideologies as 'groupings
of decontested political concepts' (Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory, p. 82.) My use of the
term 'decontestation' is wider. While including the emphasis on political concepts, I will argue that
political ideologies do more than decontest clusters of political concepts. They also try to limit
contestation of our political identifications.
of ideology will be analysed in this respect: morphological, post-Marxist,

false consciousness-based, and psychoanalytical accounts of ideology. I will
argue that as we move from morphological, through post-Marxist, to
psychoanalytical approaches, the balance shifts from an emphasis on decontes-
tation to one of recontestation. Through an engagement with each of these
approaches, I will indicate the consequences of these shifts in emphasis for the
constitution of 'ideology' as an object of analysis. However, before doing so,
it is necessary to place this interest in language and its consequences for the study
of ideology in the context of the intellectual traditions that facilitated their
emergence.
RECLAIMING IDEOLOGY: THE REBIRTH OF CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS
What seemed to many, about 1956, the subversion of political philosophy by

linguistic analysis helped to liberatethe history of political thoughtby converting
it from a history of systematization ('philosophy' in an old sense) into one of
linguistic use and sophistications ('philosophy' in a new).
John Pocock19
If the ubiquity of ideology is taken as a starting-point of analysis, several

conceptual questions arise concerning its status and specificity. McLellan, for
instance, argues that the 'pale view of the omnipresence of ideology' has the
dangerous implication of 'reducing all social phenomena to the status of mere
propaganda.'20David Morrice in his study Philosophy, Science and Ideology in
Political Thought has more recently echoed this thought.21Morrice argues that
if all thought is irreducibly ideological we cannot but fall prey to its
non-rationality, its partiality and its distorting character. The antidote to these
problems, for Morrice, is to reintroduce a distinction between political science
and political philosophy, on the one hand, and political ideology, on the other.
This, he argues, would allow one to engage in proper political analysis,
conceived as 'rational political philosophy'.22 Such a form of political
philosophy, he argues, would be able to give objective justification to political
values.23 However, the consequence of the solution proffered, is to render
ideology illegitimate as a proper object of study.
This approach stands in sharpcontrast to other recent attempts to re-establish
the legitimacy of ideology as a phenomenon amenable to serious political
analysis by demarcating it both from the concerns of normative political theory,
on the one hand, and empirical political analysis, on the other. For instance,
19
Pocock, Politics, Language and Time, p. 12.
20
David McLellan, Ideology (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1995), p. 72.
21
Morrice, Philosophy, Science and Ideology, p. x, and p. 23.
22
Morrice, Philosophy, Science and Ideology, p. 24.
23
Morrice, Philosophy, Science and Ideology, p. 234.
318 NORVAL
in Ideologies and Political Theory, Michael Freeden argues that, in opposition

to traditional studies of political thought which focus on 'truth and epistemol-
ogy, ethical richness, logical clarity, origins and causes', and aims to direct or
recommend political action, we need to develop a form of conceptual analysis
of ideologies that is sensitive to concrete political language and debate.24This
enterprise stands in sharp contrast to a perfectionist approach to political
philosophy which, Freeden points out, runs the risk of becoming increasingly
'remote from the sphere of politics'.25 To counter these tendencies, he proposes
that the study of ideology should concern itself with establishing a 'plausible,
generally applicable, and reasonably comprehensive framework of analysis that
is both intellectually and culturally satisfying, but that acknowledges the
multiplicity of available perspectives on ideological thought as well as the
inevitable gaps in recreating so intricate a phenomenon.'26 On this account,
analysis of political ideologies will take the form of explaining, interpreting,
decoding and categorizing,27 while taking cognizance of the range of socially
supported and culturally delimited formations, of which an examined concept
constitutes an integral part. In this manner, the study of ideologies can fruitfully
be approached as a specific genre of political thought that involves a close
scrutiny of fundamental political concepts, understood as those units of political
thinking which shape political argument.28
The emphasis in contemporary writings on ideology upon culturally sensitive
historical and conceptual analysis of political languages continues an intellec-
tual tradition of analysis which first emerged in the late 1960s in Cambridge.29
This tradition, fostered by scholars such as John Dunn, Quentin Skinner and
James Tully, all working with John Pocock, recast the study of the 'history of
ideas', in a manner similar to that developed by Michel Foucault, by
emphasizing the importance of language and context in the analysis of political
ideas.30 In 1971 Pocock had written 'that the paradigms which order "reality"
are part of the reality they order, that language is part of the social structureand
24
Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory, p. 7.
25
26
27
This cannot be done from an Archimedean point. Political theory, Freeden argues, cannot
claim to be an absolute clarifier of meaning. The decline of the status of truthin the social sciences,
combined with a realisation that older abstractions and model-building cannot satisfy critical
exploration of concrete idea-phenomena, have decisively problematized such an approach to the
study of political phenomena.
28
Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory, pp. 13-14.
29
In this respect, Ludwig Wittgenstein' s Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1953) and On Certainty (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969), and John Austin's How To Do Things With
Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971) have been particularlyinfluential. For the purposes
of this review I will treat both Wittgenstein and Austin as ordinary language philosophers, though
their respective works developed quite independently from one another at Cambridge and Oxford.
It is also worth noting that while writers such as Stanley Cavell, working in this tradition, have had
an important influence in the United States, language philosophy there has tended to be dominated
by more 'scientific' approaches to language, as evident in the works of Noam Chomsky.
30
See Michel Foucault, TheArchaeology of Knowledge (London: Tavistock Publications, 1974).
not epiphenomenal to it.'31 Dissatisfied with dominant liberal and Marxist forms
of analysis, as well as with historical interpretations of political thought that
attempted to reduce texts to systematizations bearing little resemblance to the
actual arguments developed in the texts, they refashioned the study of the history
of ideas through the development of a more historically sensitive, methodolog-
ically aware and philosophically informed series of studies.32 As Skinner argues,
in contrast to conceptualizing the history of political thought as a study of
canonical texts addressing a set of perennial questions, his generation began to
see the history of political thought as a 'more wide-ranging investigation of the
changing political languages in which societies talk to themselves.'33
In this regard, they were particularly influenced by the work of Ludwig
Wittgenstein and John Austin.34 The later Wittgenstein's understanding of
language as a social activity, and Austin's work on the 'illocutionary force' of
language served to open up new areas of analysis, and new methodological
approaches to the study of political thought and its relation to action in specific
historical contexts.35 Skinner's work on the role of virtui in Machiavelli's The
Prince is a case in point.36 Of great importance is the emphasis on exploring the
languages of politics in terms of prevailing conventions, including shared
vocabularies, principles, assumptions, criteria for testing knowledge-claims,
problems, conceptual distinctions, and so on.37 This enabled Skinner to establish
what a particular author may be understood to have meant by a particular
expression, how that expression relates to its historico-political context, and
how conventions may have been used to legitimize the expression, or may have
been challenged by it. This approach thus facilitated a study of language as used
in a particular society to discuss political problems, as well as the systematic
analysis of the rise and use of organized political language in the political
activity of society in general.38 As Tully points out, implicit in this approach and
31
Pocock, Politics, Language and Time, p. 38. As is apparent from this quote, Pocock was
particularlyinfluenced by Thomas Kuhn's The Structureof Scientific Revolutions, 2nd enlarged edn.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). The idea of a Kuhnianparadigmallowed him to draw
out similarities and differences between scientific and political languages and communities. See, for
instance, Pocock, Politics Language and Time, pp. 13-41.
32
See Quentin Skinner's brief account of this in his Liberty Before Liberalism (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 101-8, as well as James Tully's introductionto a collection
of Skinner's articles: James Tully, 'The Pen Is a Mighty Sword: Quentin Skinner's Analysis of
Politics', in Tully, Meaning and Context, pp. 7-25.
33
Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, p. 105.
34
These writers were also influenced by the works of a range of other scholars, including Thomas
Kuhn, R. G. Collingwood, W. B. Gallie and A. Danto.
35 Skinner firstutilized the idea of an
'illocutionary force' in his seminal article published in 1971.
An illocutionary act refers to a case where a speaker does something in saying something, and not
just as a consequence of what is said. See Quentin Skinner, 'On Performingand Explaining Linguistic
Actions', Philosophical Quarterly, 21 (1971), 1-21.
36 Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, Past Masters Series, 1981).
37
Tully, 'The Pen Is a Mighty Sword', p. 9.
38 Pocock, Politics,
Language and Time, p. 104. For Pocock these tasks correspond to that of
the historian and the political scientist respectively.
320 NORVAL
expressly argued for in Skinner's work is an understanding of ideology as

nothing other than a language of politics deployed to legitimate political action,
and to establish and/or alter a society's moral identity.39 From this perspective,
the analysis of ideologies must proceed through a careful, historically informed
conceptual analysis.
This, precisely, is the starting-point of Freeden' s morphological approach to
the study of ideologies. His approach resonates in important respects with the
work of other contemporary writers on ideology who draw on Gramscian
post-Marxist and post-structuralist traditions of thinking. These intellectual
traditions have been quite influential in the development of other dimensions
of the analysis of contemporary ideology.40 For instance, the question of
language was absolutely central for Gramsci' s account of politics. However, this
question was posed in relation to power, culture and the establishment of
hegemony. As he argues in the Prison Notebooks, a historical act
can only be performed by 'collective man', and this presupposes the attainment of
a 'cultural-social' unity through which a multiplicity of dispersed wills ... are
welded together with a single aim, on the basis of an equal and common conception
of the world ... Since this is the way things happen, great importance is assumed
by the general question of language, that is, the question of collectively attaining
a single cultural 'climate'.41
This emphasis on the importance of studying the formation of a 'common

conception of the world' comes close to a Wittgensteinian inspired interest in
the study of conventions, and the ways in which they have been deployed or
shaped by political discourses. However, in the Gramscian tradition, and this
is something that is continued in the works of Foucault, there is an added
39
Tully, 'The Pen Is a Mighty Sword', p. 13.
40
Developments in Continental philosophy over the last three decades provides us with the
second intellectual horizon which has been crucial in shaping the contours of contemporary
approaches to the question of ideology. The question of language, representationand its relation to
our world also features prominently in the French post-structuralisttradition.While approachedfrom
a different vantage-point than that developed in the Anglo-Saxon world, surprisingly many areas of
overlapping concern could be delineated. These approaches also developed in response to
dissatisfaction with ahistorical structuralistand overly metaphysical accounts of language and its
relation to the world. Of these, the most important are Foucault's archaeological and genealogical
methods, and deconstuction, even though the latter cannot, strictly speaking, be classified as a
method. For a brief discussion of similarities in approach between Skinner and Foucault, see Tully,
'The Pen Is a Mighty Sword', pp. 16-25. Several other texts have also been published over the past
decade that attempt to trace out connections between the British tradition of 'ordinary language
analysis' and continental post-structuralistapproaches to language. In this respect, see for instance:
Henry Staten, Wittgensteinand Derrida (London: University of Nebraska Press, 1984); and Stanley
Cavell, Philosophical Passages: Wittgenstein,Emerson, Austin, Derrida (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).
41 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks, edited and translatedby Quintin Hoare
and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), p. 349. See also N. Helsloot,
'Linguists of All Countries ... On Gramsci's Premise of Coherence', Journal of Pragmatics, 13
(1989), 547-66.
dimension of analysis which is crucial to the study of ideologies: the question

of subject formation.42 In true Wittgensteinian fashion, Foucault seeks to
analyse the things people say and do 'in order to identify themselves and so to
play their parts in "forms of life"'43 or discursive formations. Similarly, central
to psychoanalytic thought is the question of identity formation, and the role of
language in that process. According to Lacan, for instance, accounting for the
formation of subjects is at the same time a theory of culture, since both arise
through processes of symbolization, which are always primarily linguistic.44
Before discussing post-Marxist and psychoanalytic approaches drawing on the
works of Gramsci, Foucault and Lacan, let us investigate the articulation of a
morphological approach to ideology emerging from the Skinnerian tradition of
analysis.
CONCEPTUAL DECONTESTATION AND MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
Ideologies [are] those systems of political thinking, loose or rigid, deliberate or

unintended,through which individuals and groups construct an understandingof
the political world they, or those who preoccupy their thoughts, inhabit, and then
act on that understanding.
Michael Freeden45
In Freeden's morphological approach the field of ideologies as a specific object

of investigation is demarcated, in the first instance, by focusing on the types of
analysis required. Freeden argues that the study of political ideology entails a
three-fold analysis: the conceptual analysis of political theorists, the empirical
and contextual analysis of the historian, and an investigation of the morpholog-
ical patternsthat contribute to the determinationof ideological meanings. When
deployed together, these afford insights into the nature of political thought that
neither purely logical nor perfectionist analyses can provide. The type of
analysis deployed is also what distinguishes the study of political philosophies
and ideologies from one another.46Even though both use the same raw materials
42
The Marxist, psychoanalytic and post-structuralisttraditions all take a central interest in the
formation of subjectivity. In the Marxist tradition,this interesthas tended to take the form of a concern
with the formation of social classes. The psychoanalytic and post-structuralisttraditions avoid this
a priori determinationof subjectivity by focusing on the structuredprocesses through which subjects
are brought into being. Contemporary post-structuralistpolitical theory has taken up this concern,
and has extended it to the analysis of the formation of political subjectivity whether it takes the form
of class, individual, mass, national, gendered or ethnic subject formation.
43 John Rajchman, Truth and Eros: Foucault, Lacan and the Question Ethics
of (New York:
Routledge, 1991), p. 100.
44 Gilbert D.
Chaitin, Rhetoric and Culture in Lacan (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,
1996), p. 4.
45
46 In answer to the
question, 'Are we all ideologists?', Freeden's response is that we all have
occasion to use political language in a selective manner;we all piece our political concepts together
in particularpatterns, even when engaged in professional political thinking. Political philosophers
322 NORVAL
(political concepts), and use particular cultural and temporal standards for
attributing meaning to words, political philosophies and ideologies ought not
to be conflated. The crucial distinction between the two enterprises is to be
located in their different approaches to the study of political concepts. In the case
of the analysis of ideology, account must be taken of the role of the emotional
as well as the intellectual attractiveness of arguments, and we must examine
cultural as well as logical validations of political thinking. Here the role of the
scholar is to focus on the patterns, continuities and discontinuities political
thinking displays, and the manner in which they shape what is politically
possible. Intellectual effort should not be aimed at perfecting reality through
thought-practices that distance one from it, but should aim to interpret its
intricacies. Thus, this approach to the study of ideology seeks to bridge the gap
between, on the one hand, concrete explorations of ideologies, which have
tended to be insufficiently analytical, and, on the other hand, theoretical
treatments of ideology, which are silent about the differences in the nature and
forms of concrete ideologies.
Once the general status of the study of political ideologies is delimited, it
becomes necessary to outline different possible approaches to it so as to clarify
further the specificity of the object of investigation. Freeden argues that
ideologies may be studied from generic, functional and semantic perspectives.
Ideologies and Political Theory concentrates on the latter, on the universes of
meaning constructed by the conceptual configurations of ideologies, though this
is not done at the expense of situating these concerns in historical and
sociological contexts.47 The focus is not simply on logical and abstract
conceptual permutations; rather, it is on the location of political concepts in
terms of the patterns in which they actually appear.48There is an intimate link
between these patterns and the idea of decontestation, which informs Freeden's
analysis of ideologies. Freeden places great emphasis on the fact that while
ideologies are essentially political in character,they have the paradoxical effect
of decontesting the meaning of central political terms, so covering over the
power relationships that are central to a given concept. In this sense, ideologies
are special sorts of configurations of political concepts: they create specific
conceptual patterns from a pool of unlimited possible combinations. Con-
sequently, the construction and employment of ideologies are to be regarded as
an aspect of political conduct. They are, therefore, intimately associated with
decision-making understood as bestowing a decontested meaning on a political
term.49In other words, ideologies 'convert the inevitable variety of options into
(F'note continued)
also contribute to the construction of ideologies, and every major political thought will include
ideological components. Rawls, for instance, is both a political philosopher and an ideologist.
However, despite this Freeden makes it clear that he does not think they should be collapsed into
one another.
47 Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory, pp. 2-3.
48 Freeden's analysis utilizes written texts as raw material.
49 Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory, p. 5.
the monolithic certainty which is the unavoidable feature of a political

decision'.50 Instances of assertions such as 'this is what liberty means', and 'that
is what justice means' are attempts to limit the essential contestability of
political terms so as to 'arrive at binding decisions that determine the priority
of one course of action over another'.5
From the point of view of a conceptual focus on decontestation, what is being
decontested is not only the political concepts themselves, but the manner in
which they combine to form distinct ideological morphologies. The very idea
of a conceptual morphology starts from the postulate that words have
indeterminate, ratherthan essential, meanings; they are social constructs whose
meaning is determined by their usage.52 Yet, despite this indeterminacy, it is
possible to delimit morphological attributes of ideologies, that is, the patterned
clusters and configurations which they may display.53Through the introduction
of the idea of a conceptual morphology, Freeden is at pains to steer a path
between the Scylla of a structuralist understanding of ideology, and the
Charybdis of a complete indeterminacy. Both ignore the histories and
conventions of ideological traditions, and the specific formations of political
thinking embedded in ideologies which are formed by permissible and
legitimated meanings at the disposal of a particular society.54 This goes to the
heart of Freeden's enterprise and, in this respect, he aims to address several
central theoretical questions concerning the manner in which concrete
ideologies draw sustenance from one another. One of the factors blighting the
study of ideologies, Freeden argues, has been the assumption that concrete
ideologies consist of mutually exclusive systems of ideas.55Conservatism and
socialism, on that assumption, would be opposed to one another on most
political questions: 'to subscribe to the tenets of one creed would necessarily
rule out the endorsement of beliefs of the other'.56Yet, for the assumption to
hold, ideologies would have to be completely closed. Such a view of ideology,
Freeden argues, is overly systemic and systematic; it depends upon the
possibility of maintaining clear-cut boundaries between different idea-systems,
so denying the complexities of the 'stuff of which normal human thinking is
made'.57It is to counter the over-simplifying character of assumptions such as
these, while recognizing the essential contestability of political concepts, that
50
51 Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory, p. 76. Freeden provides a detailed discussion and
critique of the idea of 'essential contestability' as first articulatedby Gallie. See Freeden, Ideologies
and Political Theory, pp. 55-60.
52
53
54 Freeden, Ideologies and Political
Theory, p. 54.
55 Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory, p. 24.
58 Freeden, Ideologies and Political
Theory, p. 24.
57
Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory, p. 67. This, again, can be seen as a counter to the
abstractionism inherent in much of contemporary political philosophy.
324 NORVAL
Freeden introduces the idea of a morphology of political concepts and

ideologies.5
These insights are formalized by the delimitation of two crucial features of
the morphology of political concepts and, by extension, of political ideologies:
namely, that they contain both ineliminable and quasi-contingent features. I
shall startwith the former. How is it that political ideologies are social products,
yet have ineliminable features? Freeden addresses this problem through the
introduction of a distinction between intrinsic or logical necessity, and
ineliminability. Features are ineliminable in the sense 'that all known usages of
the concept employ it'.9 For instance, equality as a political concept 'appears
always to have something to do with differences among human beings and the
alleviation of those differences, ratherthan, say, with mathematical identity.'60
There is no logical reason why this should be the case, but inasmuch as the actual
usage of a concept displays such a generally shared feature, that feature may be
regarded as an ineliminable aspect of it.61 If such ineliminable features are
absent, Freeden argues that a concept would be 'bereft of a stable meaning ...
and could be dispensed with as a specific political concept.'62 However,
concepts cannot be reduced to their ineliminable components. It is here that the
second feature, namely that of quasi-contingency comes into play. Quasi-con-
tingent features are those that, while individually dispensable, occupy categories
that are not.63The example of a table deployed by Freeden quickly makes visible
what is at stake here. A table will have a colour, it will be made of hardish
material, and so forth. The individual colour and material is dispensable, but the
categories are not, and there are no logical reasons why one 'filler' of such a
category should take precedence over another: 'Because this is structurallythe
case, the choice we exercise is essentially contestable, and the specific feature
selected to fill each necessary category is contingent to the general idea of a
58
Freedenproceedsin his analysisfrom a discussionof the featuresof politicalconceptsin
general,to the attributesof politicalideologies.See, especially,Freeden,Ideologiesand Political
Theory, chap. 2.
59
Ineliminabilityis used insteadof 'core' since the lattersuggeststhatthey have a clearcore
and 'hazycircumference'.Freedendrawson contemporary linguistictheory,mostnotablyhereon
thatof Saussure,to supporthis argumentthatsignifiedsneedhaveno clearcoreof meaningin order
to functionas signifieds.Thus,in so faras theideaof a 'core'implies'a pivotalandspecificelement,
lucidly spelt out, and able to standon its own ... main politicalconceptsdo not possess cores.'
60 Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory, 62.
p.
61
62
Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory, p. 65
63
Freeden,Ideologies and Political Theory, p. 66. This view is markedlysimilarto that
developedin HansBlumenberg'sTheLegitimacyof the ModemAge (London:MIT Press, 1985)
in respectto his analysisof thecentralideasof modernity.Blumenbergarguesthatwe modemshave
'inherited'questionsfrom earlierages thathave lost theirspecificity.Nevertheless,we still feel
obliged to respondto them. Thus, modem ideas come to 'reoccupy'earlierpositions,leading
Blumenbergto assertthat'totallyheterogenouscontents[can]takeon identicalfunctionsin specific
positionsin the system of man's interpretation of the world and of himself (Blumenberg,The
Legitimacy of the Modem Age, p. 64).
table, though explicable in particular contexts and circumstances.'64 These

quasi-contingent categories will fill out the core with meaning and content.
This morphological analysis is further fleshed out with the introduction of a
discussion of the adjacent environments of political concepts, which may be
either logical or cultural. The concept of liberty, for instance, has as its
ineliminable component, a notion of 'non-constraint'. Concepts logically
adjacent, that is, those concepts referring to necessary options and permutation
which are invariably brought into play by any concretization of the notion of
non-constraint, will include autonomy, self-development and power, amongst
others. Which of these logically adjacent concepts will actually be used to flesh
out the concept of liberty is quasi-contingent. Logical adjacency is therefore
both a constraint on the indefinite variety of a concept and an opening for its
indeterminate and pluralistic structure.65The idea of cultural adjacency is
brought in to elaborate furtheron the manner in which choices are made among
a number of logically adjacent options. While some permutations follow
logically from a concept (for instance, non-constraint from liberty), this is not
the case for all permutations. It does not follow logically, in this case, that
people's life plans must never be interfered with. It is here that cultural
adjacency becomes decisive to indicate those constraints and possibilities which
are socially and culturally mediated.66It thus refers to 'specific historical and
socio-geographical phenomena that encourage the association of different
political concepts'.67
We now have the main tools that Freeden deploys in his morphological
analysis, and we can return to his definition of ideology as a complex cluster
of decontested concepts. Ideologies, in seeking to maximize determinacy, aim
to convert the inevitable variety of options into the monolithic certainty of a
political decision. However, this can never be fully accomplished, since
competing ideologies are struggles over the socially legitimated meanings of
political concepts. It is the task of the scholar to investigate, through an analysis
of morphologies, why one specific decontestation, or set of decontestations,
prevails over another at a given point in time. This account, in its broad outlines,
approximates the view of Laclau and Mouffe for whom hegemony involves a
successful, though never fully attainable, decontestation, and for whom the term
'ideology' designates those discourses which aim to establish such decontesta-
tion or 'suture'.68 The terrain of what it is that is decontested is, however,
considerably wider in this approach. It is to this view that I now turn.
64
65
66 Freeden
distinguishes furtherbetween two sorts of culturaladjacencies: those operating within
the framework of logical adjacency and elements that do not follow logically but are regarded in
ordinary usage as indispensable (Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory, pp. 70-1).
67
68
The concept of suture is taken from psychoanalysis. Laclau and Mouffe argue that hegemonic
practices are 'suturing' practices, in so far as they try to 'fill' an original lack. See Laclau and Mouffe,
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, n. 1, p. 88.
326 NORVAL
DISCURSIVE DECONTESTATION: MYTHS, IMAGINARIES AND EMPTY

SIGNIFIERS
The social world presentsitself to us, primarily,as a sedimentedensemble of social

practices accepted at face value, without questioning the founding acts of their
institution.
Ernesto Laclau69
There is a remarkable coincidence between the morphological approach to

decontestation and contemporaryattempts to develop a post-Marxist conception
of ideology, found in the work of theorists such as Claude Lefort, and Ernesto
Laclau and Chantal Mouffe.70 These theorists argue from the general
proposition that ideology entails an attempt to decontest central political
concepts and relations of domination even though such attempts must, of
necessity, fail. Laclau and Mouffe, for instance, argue that ideology serves to
naturalize what is a contingent result of historical practices of articulation.71
Similarly, Lefort argues that the organization of ideology is such that it
suppresses any sign which could destroy the sense of certainty concerning the
nature of the social. That is, ideologies attain their certainty through attempting
to cover over any sign of historical creativity.72As a consequence, ideology can
be understood as a sequence of representations which present, at the heart of
historical society, a particular organization of society as non-historical, given
and natural.73 Despite these similarities, these approaches also differ in
important respects from a morphological analysis.
Freeden's morphological analysis explicitly sets out to develop the tools to
investigate and scrutinize the functioning of political concepts in ideological
configurations. His approachself-consciously delimits itself from other possible
ways of approaching the analysis of ideology. As should be clear by now,
Freeden's analysis is developed in sharp contrast to the concerns of
contemporary political philosophy, on the one hand, and unreflective empirical
analyses of concrete ideologies, on the other. In so doing, Freeden draws
69
ErnestoLaclau,'Introduction', in ErnestoLaclau (ed.), The Making of Political Identities
(London:Verso, 1994), p. 3.
70 The terrainof post-Marxist analysis includes the work of a variety of theorists. I concentrate
here on those theorists who have taken the conceptualization and analysis of ideology as one of their
central concerns.
71 The term 'articulation' can to be understood by contrasting it to the Hegelian conception of
'mediation' and to the Marxist emphasis on a necessary relation between class and ideological
position. Thus, articulation does not refer to an internal movement of the concept, and neither does
it refer to a relation of necessity. Articulation is a political practice of linking together elements of
an ideological formation (be they subject positions or political concepts) which have no necessary
connection (Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, pp. 105-14).
72 Claude Lefort, The Political Forms of Modem Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy,
Totalitarianism, edited and introduced by John B. Thompson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986),
pp. 202-3.
73
Lefort, Political Forms of Modem Society, p. 201.
extensively on insights from a diverse body of social, political, psychological

and anthropological theory, while also distancing himself from some of the more
traditional epistemological questions surrounding the status of the concept
of ideology. This enables him to develop a series of carefully related tools for
the analysis of ideologies, some of which were discussed above. Throughout,
however, the main thrust of his analysis focuses on conceptual issues, on the
complex 'thought-text' of ideology, ratherthan on objects, institutions, symbols
and identities. Moreover, Freeden's analysis is explicitly limited to an
investigation of 'major political concepts', that is, concepts displaying the
necessary conceptual complexity appropriate to this type of analysis. Con-
sequently, he is not concerned with the analysis of those political ideologies
which do not display such complexity. He also does not discuss a series of
issues which may be argued to be logically adjacent to the study of morphology.
One such area of analysis concerns the issues that emerge once one asks
questions about the functioning of ideologies, and the mannerin which political
identities are constituted in and through ideological practices. In other words,
concerns, highlighted in the Gramscian and Foucaultian traditions, about the
theorization of subjectivity and its relation to the functioning of ideology
become central.
Freeden's argumentsconcerning the production and consumption of ideology
focus principally upon intention and comprehension.74 His arguments can be
usefully supplemented by Laclau and Mouffe's post-Marxist account of
ideology.75 Freeden and Laclau and Mouffe share a broad agreement on the
ubiquitous nature of ideology, and on the fact that ideologies function through
processes of decontestation. This very account of decontestation rests on a prior
proposition concerning the contestability of all political terms which is also
shared by post-Marxist theories of ideology. However, as I have suggested at
the outset of my discussion of ideology and decontestation, the different
starting-point of post-Marxist theories of ideology has importantconsequences
for an understanding of what exactly is being decontested. Laclau and Mouffe,
like other post-Marxists, do not limit their critique of essentialism to the domain
of the meanings of political concepts. The very character of 'society' and
'identity' are also put into question.76Their early trajectory was one of a critical
engagement with Marxist theory so as to arrive at a discursive77understanding
74
Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory, pp. 105-11.
75
For critical overviewsof see Fred R.
their work, Dallmayr, 'Hegemony and Democracy: On
Laclau and Mouffe', Strategies, 1 (1988), 29-49; and David Howarth, 'Discourse Theory and
Political Analysis', in E. Scarborough and E. Tannenbaum, eds, Research Strategies in the Social
Sciences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 268-93.
76 Laclau and Mouffe also utilize these insights in order to develop their concept of radical
democracy. For a critical reading of the relation between their general theoretical stance and their
conception of radical democracy, see William E. Connolly, 'Review Essay: Twilight of the Idols',
Philosophy and Social Criticism, 21 (1995), 127-37.
77
Since theirs is a post-Marxist but still materialist account, it is importantto note that the term
'discursive', like Wittgenstein's 'language games', includes both linguistic and non-linguistic
328 NORVAL
of hegemony and ideology. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy develops a critique

of essentialism aimed at cleansing the Marxist conception of ideology from
essentialism generally and, more specifically, from the last vestiges of class
determinism. To achieve this, they develop a critique of the topographical,
base/superstructure conception of ideology informing Marxism. This critique
involves a rejection of the idea of 'society' as a naturalized and given object of
analysis. Laclau and Mouffe argue that society is traversedby antagonism78and
that it lacks an essence since it is an overdetermined and precarious unity
resulting from discursive, articulatory practices.
There is clearly a large degree of coincidence between this account, and
Freeden's morphological account of the 'structure' of ideologies. However,
Laclau and Mouffe develop these insights in order to account for the manner
in which particulardiscursive representations succeed in becoming hegemonic
or decontested. In so doing, they introduce a series of different intermediary
analytical concepts aimed at grasping the process through which the precarious
unity of the social is established. Of these, the concepts of 'myth' and
'imaginary' are the most important.Where a social order is dislocated, one may
expect attempts to overcome dislocation. Such processes, Laclau argues, take
the form of the articulation of new principles for (re)interpreting, and thus
reconstructing, the political order. Structurally, these new ordering principles
may take two forms: myth and imaginary. As Laclau formulates it, the work of
myth is to re-establish closure where a social order has been dislocated. This
(F'note continued)
elements. These elements have no essential belonging to either class, or any other positions. Both
the relations between elements and the identity of the elements themselves are given as a result of
practices of articulation, which create nodal points around which discourses are organised. For
instance, there is no logically necessary reason why democracy must also entail the right of women
to vote. That these links are established at all is indicative of a series of contingent articulationswhich
have arisen in a particular social and historical context over time. Moreover, since the identity of
elements is relational in character, such an articulation will alter both the character of democracy
and that of the force uttering the demand.
78 Laclau and Mouffe's theorization of
'antagonism' is closely related to their understandingof
the nature of identity. Drawing on Saussurean linguistics, they argue that all identity is relational in
character.That is, identity is achieved by differentiation from other identities ratherthan by reference
to any positive characteristics. For instance, Scottish identity is not given solely by any possible
positive determinations, but by reference to its difference from 'Englishness', 'Welshness' and
'Irishness'. An antagonism arises when there is a perception that 'an other' is preventing me from
achieving my identity. To return to our example, in so far as Scottish nationalists argue that 'the
English' and their institutions (such as Westminster) are preventing them from achieving their
political goals and developing their national character,one would argue that an antagonistic relation
exists. There is, however, a further twist to the argument. The resolution of a specific antagonism
does not, in itself, mean that a full and transparent identity will be achieved. That is, even the
elimination of this 'other', who may be blocking me from achieving my identity, will not open the
way to a fully self-contained identity, since identity is established relationally and, thus, can never
be fully closed in upon itself. This has important consequences for our understanding of political
ideologies which also gain their identities through differentiation from other ideological positions.
The end of the Cold War, for instance, has not led to the development of a harmonious, conflict-free
international political order, but to a proliferation of constructions of new enemies/others.
is done through the constitution of a new 'space of representation'.79A myth,

as a novel principle of reading, thus attempts to reconstruct the social as
objectively given; its operation is nothing other than an endeavour to
reconstitute the absent unity of society via the naturalizationof its divisions and
a universalization of the demands of a particulargroup. In so far as its succeeds,
or manages to become institutionalized, it can be said to have become
hegemonic. Under such circumstances, the myth has been transformed into an
imaginary: a horizon on which a multiplicity of demands may be inscribed.80
In so far as every attempt to introduce closure - to decontest - and to institute
a structure is ideological, both the categories of myth and imaginary can be
utilized in the analysis of the discursive (ideological) structuringof the social.
This account also elaborates a series of adjacent concepts, one might argue -
concepts that are logically adjacent in Freeden's sense. Of these adjacent
concepts, subjectivity is the most central to ideological analysis. In contrast to
Althusserian structuralism, and to class reductionist approaches to ideology
more generally, this theory of ideology aims to 'bring subjectivity back in'.
Laclau and Mouffe propose, in the place of structuraldeterminism, that the place
of the subject can be located where the structurefails to institute closure and
to provide unified images of selfhood. Thus, the subject is neither given prior
to entering into social relations as in liberal accounts of subjectivity, where
'individuality' is already a subject position with which there is identification,
nor is it the simple result of structurally determining processes. The subject
emerges where there is dislocation; at the point at which things are still at stake,
where meanings and identities are loosened from their structural subject
positions.81 Thus, there are two theoretically distinct processes that have to be
analysed. First, one needs to inquire into the subject positions created for the
subject in ideology; that is, into those processes that make contingent and
historically specific images appear natural, unmediated and direct. Secondly,
one needs to investigate the failure of existing images, and the resulting
possibility of constructing new identities. An example may serve to clarify the
issue. With the breakdown of the apartheidorder the identities of both black and
white South Africans were destabilized, and new possibilities for identification
have been opened up. For instance, not only were whites forced to question their
'racial superiority', but those who participated in the armed struggle against
apartheid had to make the transition from 'revolutionaries' to members of a
79
Laclau, New Reflections, p. 61.
80 It is
important to note that the reverse process may also occur. A discourse may fail in its
function of the universalization of particularsocial demands. In this case, the imaginary horizon will
be less and less successful in inscribing those demands within its orbit. The imaginary will enter into
a crisis, and revert to being a myth revealing, once again, the particularityof the very attemptto create
an image of representation for the society as a whole.
81
Primarilyas response to a critical reading by Slavoj Zizek, Laclau has introduceda distinction
between the idea of the subject in a radical sense, and the Foucaultian idea of subject positions in
his later works. See Slavoj Zizek, 'Beyond Discourse-Analysis', in Laclau, New Reflections,
pp. 249-60.
330 NORVAL
democratically elected government. This has not occurred without difficulty.

The new subject positions were not simply available, but had to be constituted
in and through political struggle. Thus, analysis of both the mechanisms through
which contingent political identities become naturalized and decontested, and
the processes through which recontestion occur are of crucial importance in the
understanding of the operation of ideologies. The former allows one to engage
with the manner in which ideologies create and sustain images for identification,
while the latter facilitates analysis of interpellative failures. If one concentrates
solely on the former, one runs the risk of reintroducing an account of the subject
and of society which, in principle, may allow complete suture. One may be
tempted to say, 'if only there were no competing discourses, the subject might
be one with him or herself.' By contrast, if one concentrates solely on the latter,
one runs the risk of negating the importance of the role that images for
identification play in political life. This account of the discursive constitution
of political identities adds crucial insights into the way ideologies operate. Most
importantly, it allows us to focus on the manner in which ideologies that do not
necessarily display the conceptual complexity of the core political concepts
analysed by Freeden - such as fascism, nationalism, Kemalism, populism and
a plethora of other ideologies - may operate. The emphasis on identification and
its failures, and the manner in which these are discursively negotiated, is an
indispensable dimension of the operation of ideological processes.
More recently, Laclau has extended his and Mouffe's earlier analysis of
ideology to the operation of what he calls 'empty signifiers'.82Empty signifiers
are those signifiers which attempt to represent the absent fullness of a
community. That is, they are those signifiers which embody the unity of a
community which, nevertheless, cannot ever be fully achieved.83 In this, he
argues, the operation of ideology par excellence is located.84In other words, the
study of ideology is the study of the mechanisms which makes this illusion
possible.85Imagine a situation of radical dislocation of the social fabric in which
a need for order arises. Laclau argues that if people need 'an order', its actual
contents become a secondary consideration: ' "Order"as such has no content,
because it exists only in the various forms in which it is actually realised'.
However, in a situation of radical disorder 'order' is 'present as that which is
absent; it becomes an empty signifier, the signifier of that absence.'86As a result,
political forces may compete in their efforts to present their particularobjectives
as those which may carry out the task of filling the lack. Ideological struggles
are, therefore, struggles over the filling out of such empty signifiers. This filling
process operates through a double inscription. It is a process that simultaneously
82
See especially, Laclau, 'Death and Resurrection'; and Laclau, 'Empty Signifiers'.
83
The fullness of community can never be achieved since identity itself is always already
internally divided. As pointed out earlier, this conception of identity is derived from both the
psychoanalytic account of the split subject, and linguistic theorization of the relationality of identity.
84
Laclau, 'Death and Resurrection', p. 212.
85
86
Laclau, 'Empty Signifiers', p. 44.
signifies the need and impossibility of closure; the need to constitute a unified
representation of society, and the impossibility of ever doing so entirely.87
This results in the ever-present possibility of recontestation and struggle
over the particularobjects that may take on this task, a task which is, in principle
and in practice, impossible to fulfil. There are clear parallels between the
function and role of the empty signifier and its particularfillers, and that of the
filling out of ineliminable features by quasi-contingent categories. However,
there are also some important differences. It is to a discussion of these, and the
manner in which the two approaches may supplement one another, that I now
turn.
This is best done through an example. Drawing on Walzer' s account in Thick
and Thin of how particulardemands such as 'the end of arbitraryarrests', 'equal
and impartiallaw enforcement' and so on, give content to 'justice' for the Prague
demonstrators, Laclau argues that 'justice' as an empty signifier is not
necessarily associated with any of these demands: 'as it has no representation
of its own, once incarnated in certain demands it becomes in some way
imprisoned by them, and is not able to circulate freely.'88 Once a demand such
as 'the end of arbitraryarrests' has become one of the names of 'justice', some
other demands, such as 'the prevalence of the will of the people over all legal
restrictions', cannot enter the fray, except with difficulty. Thus, the filling out
of empty signifiers by particularistic demands will limit the operation of that
empty signifier, in this case, 'justice'. However, this is only one side of the
argument. Laclau also emphasizes the extent to which empty signifiers, such as
'justice', are empty ratherthan 'floating'.89Floating signifiers are simply terms
that are subject to a great deal of contestation and which, as a result, have no
clearly delimited meaning, while empty signifiers ultimately have no signifieds.
They signify a structuralimpossibility in signification as such, an impossibility
that is shown only in the interruptionor subversion of the sign. What does this
mean for a signifier such as 'justice', if it is to be not just a floating, contested
signifier? It suggests that in some instances 'justice' may come to represent
the 'pure being of the system',90 a being which is constitutively unrealizable.
We are thus dealing with an impossibility that can only ever be instantiated
or 'positivized' approximately. Which signifiers will play this role of
87
This account of the 'impossibility of society' relies upon a more general account of the
impossibility of the full constitution of any identity, and is drawn from both the psychoanalytic and
deconstructive traditions. Derrida's deconstructive reading of the concept of 'structure' has been
particularly influential in this respect for the development of Laclau and Mouffe's arguments. See
Jacques Derrida, 'Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences', in Jacques
Derrida, Writing and Difference (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 278-93.
88
89
The distinction between floating and empty signifiers is in need of further theoretical
elaboration. It is not clear whether Laclau regards them as fulfilling different functions, or whether
he intends the latter to replace the former.
90
Laclau, 'Empty Signifiers', p. 39. Signifying nothing, and signifying the 'pure being' of the
system, ultimately amounts to the same thing.
332 NORVAL
approximation and of filling out depends, Laclau argues, on the relevant social
context.91
The place of the empty signifier is thus structurally equivalent to that of the
ineliminable features of political ideologies in Freeden's morphological
analysis, and the 'filling function' of particularistic demands are equivalent to
its quasi-contingent features. The series of further analytical distinctions
Freeden provides, most notably his detailed treatment of logical and cultural
adjacency could be used to supplement and deepen Laclau's gesture towards the
'relevant social context'. In other words, Freeden provides us with a detailed
account, absent in Laclau's theorization, of the factors limiting the possible
articulations which may be actualized in any given context. However, Laclau's
analysis also points to a dimension of the functioning of ideological processes
which is absent in Freeden's, namely, a theoretical elaboration of the manner
in which significant signifiers not only represent particularideological contents,
but the impossibility of the closure of the system as such.92 And it is this
dimension of the analysis that facilitates a different engagement with idea of the
ubiquity of ideology. Given the dual characterof the empty signifier - signifying
both the need and the impossibility of full closure - it would only be possible
to postulate the end of ideology if one of the two operations succeeded in
eliminating the other. Should the particularistic demand, attempting to occupy
the place of the empty signifier, become dominant, the split between empty and
floating signifier would be dissolved; but should there be a completely empty
signifier with no remaining traces of particularity, that split would also be
obliterated, and one would have a social order in complete coincidence with
itself. Both these options are, however, impossible to obtain fully, since the
operation of the one depends upon the other. The difficult and necessary
negotiation of the movement between the floating and empty signifier, or to put
it in different terms, between the particular and the universal, ensures that we
will continue to live in an ideological universe.
This conception of ideology thus retains a reference to the idea of 'illusion'.
Contrary to McLellan's reading, the fact that ideology is ubiquitous does not
mean that it does not have any specificity. It is not the case that we simply have
several discourses competing with one another in a realm in which it is possible
for any one of them to occupy the space of representation fully. That would
be the ideological illusion par excellence. The specificity of the ideological
illusion thus consists in the fact that it projects on to a particular object the
91 The main limitation of this formulation is that it

simply throws the analysis back on an
undifferentiated idea of 'context'. In order to facilitate analysis of ideologies, this needs to be
supplemented, at the very least, by a Foucaultian conception of genealogy, and by the development
of meso-level concepts. Paul Smith argues, along similar lines, that this problem raises the wider
question of the relationship between a theory of indeterminacy and the work of historical specificity
(Paul Smith, 'Laclau's and Mouffe's Secret Agent', in Miami Theory Collective (ed.), Community
at Loose Ends (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), pp. 99-110, at p. 106).
92 This, of course, also means that a total decontestation can never be achieved. Political terms
and identities will always be subject to recontestation.
impossible fullness of the community.93And this impossibility becomes visible

in the necessary dislocations to which discourses are subjected. As a result, a
space for the re-emergence of the subject is reopened. It is now possible to return
to the question of decontestation. At the outset I argued that the post-Marxist
approach to ideology as decontestation goes well beyond deciphering the
meaning of central political concepts, though it necessarily also involves that.
What is being decontested in this account, in addition to the meaning of political
concepts, is the very structuringof the social order, and of the political identities
constructed in and through such an ordering. It is possible for agents to occupy
certain subject positions, and for imaginary effects to function, on condition that
those positions are decontested and that the particularity of the origin of
imaginary effects is not visible.
DECONTESTATION: FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE INTELLIGIBILITY

OF THE WORLD
What is to be explained is not the fact that the man who is hungrysteals or the fact
thatthe man who is exploited strikes,but why the majorityof those who are hungry
don't steal and why the majority of those who are exploited don't strike.
Wilhelm Reich, in Michael Rosen94
If the ideological function par excellence is the attempt to dissimulate the

conditions of existence of the community, does this not lead us back to a
conception of ideology as false consciousness? While Laclau quickly discounts
this possibility, arguing that categories such as 'false representation' make sense
only on condition that they are opposed to something 'true', it is, none the less,
important to engage with this question in more depth. In order to do so, I will
concentrate on a very different contemporary engagement with this conception
of ideology, namely, that of Michael Rosen, who in his recently published On
Voluntary Servitude, provides a detailed discussion of the different ways of
thinking about the idea of false consciousness. He starts his analysis with
Reich's riddle quoted above. His central claim arises from this riddle. It is that
the theory of ideology must, of necessity, rely upon some notion of false
consciousness. The book proceeds via a double strategy to support this claim,
and to demonstrate its untenability.95On the one hand, he provides a genealogy
of the historical development of the concept of false consciousness, from its
roots in the Enlightenment to its present day manifestations in the works of the
Frankfurt School. On the other hand, he sets out to provide conceptual
clarification and a philosophical critique of the theory of ideology.
93 Laclau, 'Death and Resurrection',
p. 206.
94 Wilhelm Reich, quoted in Rosen, On Voluntary Servitude, p. 1.
95
Through showing the untenability of the theory of ideology, Rosen also points to a number
of new directions which social theory needs to explore furtherso as to be able to provide alternative
answers to Reich's riddle.
334 NORVAL
Rosen's account, as he makes clear at the outset, is premised upon a certain

reading of the theory of ideology which aims to investigate the underlying
structureand presuppositions of this theory. Anyone sharing those presupposi-
tions, he claims, is condemned by his criticisms.96The two background beliefs
Rosen identifies as informing the theory of ideology are, first, that societies are
systems in the sense that they maintain themselves in ways that cannot be
accounted for from a common-sense individualistic perspective and, secondly,
that unequal societies are preserved, not simply by coercion but by a form
of 'false consciousness' on the part of those in whose interests it would be
to change those societies.97 The discussion of these background beliefs is
framed by an important dichotomy Rosen identifies as running through the
works of theorists of ideology as diverse as Althusser, Sartre, Habermas,
Foucault and Gramsci, amongst others. That is the line between those who
see the source of the determination of ideas in society as found in either a
collective, social subject (neo-Hegelians), or in social processes which are
generative but agentless (structuralists). It is through a rejection of both sides
of this dichotomy that Rosen comes to his problem: claims made about the social
determination of ideas are so 'alarmingly sweeping' and imprecise as to be
practically useless.
Why then did this picture at the heart of the theory of ideology hold us in its
grip for so long?98The answer to this question is to be found, not in the theory
of ideology itself, but in what Rosen, following Nietzsche, locates as a more
general feature of modem life: the need to make the world in which we live
acceptable to ourselves. Nietzsche suggests that there are three ways in which
human beings attempt to do this. These are Dionysian intoxication and the
Appolonian attitude, through which the self attempts to escape from suffering
either through self-abandonment or through imagining a perfect realm, and
Socratism, which entails the idea that there is a reason for everything, including
suffering. Seen from this point of view, the theory of ideology as a theory about
false consciousness is but one possible response to that need. Part of its
plausibility lies in the fact that it gives the world a particularly appealing kind
of intelligibility. In order to elaborate upon these insights, it is necessary to look
in more depth at the reasons why Rosen rejects the two background beliefs of
theory of ideology, and how those particular reasons lead him to outline the
features of an alternative to the theory of ideology which would, nevertheless,
provide an answer to Reich's question.
Rosen's investigation of false consciousness starts by looking at
96
Rosen, On Voluntary Servitude, p. 2.
97
Rosen, On VoluntaryServitude, p. 7. Rosen's work is informed by a clear-cut but problematic
distinction between ideology and coercion. I would argue that in so far as ideology interpellates
subjects, its operation clearly contains a dimension of coercion.
98
Wittgenstein talks of pictures holding us captive, or of forcing themselves upon us, so that
we cannot think of things except in terms of those pictures (Wittgenstein, Philosophical
Investigations, remark 115).
what Austin would have called the illocutionary force of the term.99The point
about false consciousness is that it explains, or seeks to explain, the persistence
of unequal and unjust societies.10? The beginnings of a specifically political
account of false consciousness, located in the thought of Rousseau and Adam
Smith, entails adherence to two propositions. The first is the claim that false
consciousness involves the desire to be seen by others in a certain way, and the
second, that false consciousness is not an unchanging feature of human nature
but varies with (perhaps as a result of) different forms of society.101It is only
when these claims are brought together with the belief that society is a
self-maintaining system, that we can speak of a theory of ideology in the full
sense. This combination of beliefs, according to Rosen, finds full expression
only in Hegel's philosophy. It was left to Marx to place them in an avowedly
secular (materialistic and scientific) account of society.102But, Rosen argues,
Marxist theory fails to deliver on this count, since it provides no satisfactory
account of the self-maintaining characterof society. That is, it has no elaborating
explanation equivalent to the account of naturalselection found in evolutionary
biology upon which the very idea of society as 'organism' rested in the first
place.
Several possibilities open up at this point, and Rosen outlines two as
alternative answers to Reich's question. The first alternative starts from the
premise that what needs to be explained, namely uncoerced compliance, could
be done without recourse to the idea of false consciousness. False consciousness,
Rosen argues, fails to account for a central aspect of its own operation. It does
not address the problem of collective action,103 that is, the possible 'discrepancy
99 Austin draws attention to the

illocutionary force, or point, of utterances. See Austin, How to
Do Things with Words, edited by J.O. Urmson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).
100It should be noted that a consequence of this determination is that, on Rosen's reading, just
and equal societies would not require such false consciousness. This stands in stark opposition to
the post-Marxist theories discussed above which hold that all societies require the construction of
images of their unity. Even just and equal societies would therefore need justification and
representation.
101Rosen, On
Voluntary Servitude, p. 99-100.
102
Rosen, On Voluntary Servitude, p. 167.
103
As a result of this emphasis on individual action, a recent commentator on On Voluntary
Servitude has characterizedRosen as 'a good man fallen among individualists'. See Alex Callinicos,
'A Good Man Fallen Among Individualists', Radical Philosophy, 85 (1997), 36-8. This shift to
individualism could be attributed to the dichotomy Rosen sets up between structuralist and
neo-Hegelian positions. Since he lacks the appropriatetheoretical tools, he cannot envisage a theory
that does account for collective action but which is non-individualistic. This possibility is opened
up by post-Marxist accounts of subjectivity. A post-Marxist analysis will also be able to address one
of the other problems with Rosen's alternative account. His emphasis on both instrumental and
non-instrumentalaction fails to account for the role of failures of imaginary horizons. Any account
of the emergence of new horizons of intelligibility (myths) must also take cognisance of the failures
of old horizons, and the central role the formation of political identities played in such processes.
Finally, Freeden's insights into the cultural limits set upon the development by political ideologies
could be used to account for the fact that one rather than another new myth emerges in a specific
context.
336 NORVAL
that there may be between what is rational for the individual and what is rational
for the group of individuals.' From this point of view, the problem of false
consciousness may be reformulated. The rule of the many by the few then
becomes a problem of co-ordination between individuals in opposition to an
illegitimate regime. This problem is best explained by an example. If one looks
at the history of the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, it could
quite easily be shown that dissent has a snowball structure:once public actions
against a regime reach a certain point, they tend to expand rapidly. What needs
to be explained is not this feature of resistance, but how it gets off the ground
in the first instance. This, Rosen argues, could be accounted for by looking at
the non-instrumental actions of individual dissidents who were prepared to
engage in political action despite 'a clear perception of the limited chances of
success'. Thus, even instrumental actions have non-instrumental origins. This
brings Rosen to the conclusion that the 'few are able to dominate the many to
the extent that they are able to prevent the latter from engaging in the initially
crucial phases of organisation ... In this way, it is possible to explain the survival
of prima facie illegitimate societies without supposing that the oppressed are
suffering from false consciousness.'
The second, and more interesting, alternative to the theory of ideology as
explanation of uncoerced compliance is that societies are characterized by false
consciousness, without it being true that the false consciousness exists because
it helps society to survive. In other words, 'false consciousness exists and is
functional for, but not functionally explained by, the social system.'104 This
alternative takes the first background belief as true, but rejects the second, that
of societies as self-maintaining systems.105Today, this view is articulatedby Jon
Elster who identifies three sorts of activities through which societies obtain
voluntary but non-rational compliance, defined as compliance against one's
interests. They are fallacies of inference, 'sour grapes' and 'wishful thinking'.
These could be regardedas strategies that individuals have for making the world
acceptable to themselves. This brings Rosen to a discussion of, and attempt to
recuperate, the 'unscientific' elements of Marx's thought. The ontological
doctrine of society as self-maintaining was an inheritance of providentialist
thinkers that attempted to transfer the search for meaning in a disenchanted
world of the physical sciences to human history. The continuation of this motive
plausibly explains part of the appeal of Marx's own theory in general and the
theory of ideology in particular.106From this point of view, the theory of
104Rosen, On
Voluntary Servitude, p. 262.
105
Examples, in this respect, includes Rousseau's analysis of modem society dominated by
amour-propre and Adam Smith's emphasis on the idea that humans are inclined to sympathize with
those whose situation they judge to be fortunate. Once again, this issue has been theorized explicitly
in post-Marxism. Laclau and Mouffe take as their starting-point a problematization of the idea of
closed systems. This issue becomes even more central to Laclau's later works. See, for instance,
Laclau, 'Empty Signifiers'.
106A
pernicious problem with the theory of ideology is that it enables those who hold it to divide
the world between those who are presumed to be and those who are not in ideology's grip. The theory
ideology - a theory presented as an objective attempt to understand the nature

of beliefs held for non-rational reasons - can be seen as part of the phenomenon
it purports to explain. But the problems which it was articulated to address in
the first instance, remain real. In order to address these problems, Rosen draws
out three issues of central importance in social theory, even if we no longer look
to theories of ideology to explain them. They concern challenges to the
rationalist conception of the subject, the question of non-rational beliefs, and
the unity of culture. Only the first two concern us here. In what follows, I will
attempt to show that, contrary to Rosen's view, contemporary theories of
ideology do in fact address these problems. Indeed, they are the very problems
animating contemporary theories of ideology. Thus, we do not, and need not,
abandon or find alternatives to the theory of ideology.
The rationalism of the Marxist ideal, with its emphasis on a reintegrated
collective subject, needs to be problematized. Rosen sees psychoanalysis, and
particularlyFreudianism, as the most radical challenge to this conception of the
subject, and proposes that we 'pursue the construction of a genuinely
anti-rationalist understanding of the self that will not simply capitulate to
unreason'. It is in this respect that psychoanalytic conceptions of subjectivity
may be of relevance to theories of ideology, and it is to such an account in the
work of Slavoj Zizek that I turn in the next section. The second central issue
Rosen highlights, is that of non-rational beliefs. Non-rational beliefs are those
beliefs that go against the interests of those who hold them.107 Rosen proposes
that these beliefs should not be treated as wholly pathological, since they are
nothing but attempts to make the world acceptable by making it intelligible.
Even if one may want to question the idea of objective interests and its relation
to 'non-rational' beliefs as outlined by Rosen, one could not but agree with the
general direction of his argument.The task today, Rosen argues, is to show how,
in historically specific cases 'certain models of intelligibility and models of the
nature of reality come to exercise a hold over particular societies at particular
times by meeting the need for explanation in different ways.108 These would be
non-deterministic explanations, for there is no suggestion that the search for
meaning is determined to take only particular forms at particular times. Now,
(F'note continued)
of ideology offers its holders the psychic benefits that come to those who believe they are part of
a vanguard.
107 It is remarkablethat Rosen never once
questions the idea of interests as objectively given. In
fact, his analysis simply assumes that agents have interests, and that they are given in an
unproblematic fashion. From a post-Marxist perspective, it would be necessary to investigate the
historico-political processes in and through which interests come to be constituted, and become
decontested, appearing as natural.For a genealogy of the idea of interests, see Albert 0. Hirschman,
The Passions and the Interests (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), esp. Part 1.
108 Rosen, On
Voluntary Servitude, p. 272. In particular, Rosen argues that we need to account
for the rise of scientism since the decline of Providentialism. Providentialism was a model that
satisfied a series of explanatory needs in ways that were thought to be consonant with the developing
sciences of the time. With the decline of Providentialism, the characterof non-rational belief about
society changed significantly. The nineteenth century saw the displacement of Providentialist
justifications of social inequality by biological ones (such as Social Darwinism).
338 NORVAL
it is quite possible and, I would argue, illuminating to regardthis as a restatement

of the relation between the ineliminable and quasi-contingent features of
ideology informing the morphological ideology analysis. For Rosen, the need
to provide an account of our existence so as to make it intelligible is an
ineliminable need displayed by human beings living in modem societies. What
fills out these needs - Dionysian abandonment, an appeal to Appolonian beauty,
Socratism, or theories of false consciousness - are contingent 'fillers' of
necessary categories. This argument, moreover, bears clear similarities to that
of the role myths and imaginaries play in post-Marxist theories of ideology, for
their role is precisely to make intelligible a world subject to disruption and
dislocation.
How, then, does this enrich our account of decontestation and its relation to
the operation of ideology? Decontestation here operates as that which is
necessary for modem society and for modem humans to function at all, for it
addresses a fundamental human need to make the world, with all its vicissitudes
and inequalities, intelligible. However, it is important to note that Rosen's
arguments commit him to a more limited account of this need than is the case
with either Laclau and Mouffe, or Freeden. This is so in two senses. First, he
remains committed to providing an account of those mechanisms which serve
not simply to make the world in general intelligible; but which make inequality
intelligible. That is, in contrast to Laclau and Mouffe's emphasis on ideology
as the representation of an impossible unity tout court, Rosen is concerned with
a more precise question about the mechanisms which allow uncoerced
compliance withprimafacie unjust and unequal societies to function. Moreover,
he locates the political dimensions of this problem specifically within
modernity, while Laclau, especially in his later work, does not limit this need
to moder societies, but proclaims it to be a universal characteristic, found as
much in mysticism as in liberalism.109This raises a crucial problem for the
analysis of ideology. Is it enough simply to assert the idea of the ubiquity of
ideology, or does it need further specification? Is the ubiquity of ideology a
function of specifically moder societies? Is it linked to the dissimulation of
relations of domination, rather than simply fulfilling a general human need?
These questions stand at the heart of recent accounts of ideology, which draw
inspiration primarily from Lacanian psychoanalysis.
DECONTESTATION: INTRODUCING THE REAL
Ideology is not simply a 'false consciousness', an illusory representationof reality,

it is ratherthis reality itself which is already to be conceived of as 'ideological'.
Slavoj Zizekll?
Let us start with the question concerning the relation between modernity and
'09 This is implicit in the discussion of mysticism in 'Death and Resurrection', as well as in
Laclau's writings on universality and particularity.These writings treatthe tensions between the lack
and the filling function as universal features of all of human thought and history.
110
Zizek, The Sublime Object, p. 21.
ideology. Claude Lefort, in The Political Forms of Modern Society, provides an

unequivocal answer to this question. The operation of ideology is a feature of
a specific type of society, a society in which social reality is intelligible in itself,
and not through some transcendent principle of ordering.11 Although religion
and ideology may share certain general features in the sense that both provide
structures of intelligibility, the latter does so in the precise conditions of the
modem state, where political power is circumscribed within society, and where
there is a need to provide an image or representationof the unity of society which
that society lacks. Thus, Lefort recuperates one of the central insights of Marx's
work, namely, that modem society can relate to itself only on condition that it
forges a representation of its unity. The function of ideology is to provide a
projection of imaginary unity, and to make that projection appearnatural.These
images of unity are, however, always subject to failures of concealment. The
necessary failure of such concealment arises from the fact that ideologies are
secondary discourses which seek to cover over the fact of the institution of
modem society, and to negate it through processes of naturalization. The
impossibility of achieving complete concealment and naturalization thus
depends on the gap between the discourse and that about which it speaks, the
very institution of social division. The task facing the analyst of ideology is to
conceptualize the mechanisms which secure the imaginary essence of the
community, without falling back on naturalistic fictions. This, Lefort argues,
presupposes that we no longer confuse social division with the empirical
distribution of individuals in the process of production. We cannot undertake
to delimit ideology with reference to a reality whose features would be derived
from positive knowledge, without thereby losing a sense of the operation of the
constitution of reality, and of the distinction between 'reality' and 'the real'.112
It is this very distinction, and its consequences for misrecognition, which is at
the heart of Slavoj Zizek's attempt to bring together Lacanian psychoanalysis
and the theory of ideology.13
According to Zizek the ideological is a social reality the very existence of
which implies the non-knowledge of its adherents as to its essence.114 This
insight is best illustrated by contrast to Sloterdijk's thesis that the dominant
mode of functioning of ideology in contemporary societies is a cynical one. The
cynical subject is aware of the distance between the ideological mask and social
reality, but he or she none the less still insists upon the mask: 'one knows the
1ll Lefort, Political Forms of Modem Society,

pp. 181-236.
112
The real is one of the three orders according to which all psychoanalytic phenomena may be
described, the other two being the symbolic and imaginary orders.Evans argues that a constant theme
in Lacan's work from 1953 onwards focuses on the character of the real as unassimilable to
symbolization. For a discussion of the different nuances of the term 'real' in Lacanianpsychoanalysis,
see Dylan Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge,
1996), pp. 159-61.
113 Zizek's most recent book The Ticklish
Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology
(London: Verso, 1999) appeared too late to be included in this review.
114 Zizek, The Sublime Object, p. 21.
340 NORVAL
falsehood very well, one is aware of the particularinterest behind an ideological

universality, but still one does not renounce it'."15Zizek argues that cynical
reason conceived in these terms proceeds too quickly, for it leaves untouched
the fundamental level of ideological fantasy, the level on which ideology
structuressocial reality itself. The standardconception of the way fantasy works
within ideology 'is that of a fantasy-scenario that obfuscates the true horror of
a situation'.16 The example of safety instructions on an aeroplane prior to
take-off is instructive: 'after a gentle landing on water ... each of the passengers
puts on the life-jacket and, as on a beach toboggan, slides into the water and takes
a swim, like a nice collective lagoon holiday'.7 This 'gentrifying' of a
catastrophe is not what is at stake in the psychoanalytic conception of fantasy.
Rather, the psychoanalytic conception of fantasy does not direct attention to an
illusion masking the real state of things, but to an unconscious fantasy
structuring our social reality itself.118 Ideology, on this reading, is not a
'dreamlike illusion that we build to escape reality'; it is an illusion which
structures our social relations by masking a traumatic social division - the real
in Lacanian terms - which cannot be symbolized. 19It is importantto stress that
the Lacanian 'real' should not be confused with 'reality' as reality is that which
is always already symbolized, constructed by symbolic mechanisms. The real,
however, is that part of reality which remains unsymbolized, but which always
returns to haunt ideological attempts to cover it over. The Marxian notion of
class struggle is a case in point. Zizek argues that the ultimate paradox of 'class
struggle' is that society is held together:
by the very antagonism,splitting,thatforeverpreventsits closure in a harmonious,
transparent,rational Whole - by the very impediment that undermines every
rational totalization. Although 'class struggle' is nowhere directly given as a
positive entity, it none the less functions,in its veryabsence, as the point of reference
enabling us to locate every social phenomenon- not by relatingit to class struggle
as its ultimate meaning ... but by conceiving it as (an)otherattemptto conceal and
'patch up' the rift of class antagonism, to efface its traces. What we have here is
the structural-dialectical paradox of an effect that exists only in order to efface the
causes of its existence...120
For Zizek, class struggle is the real in the Lacanian sense. The real gives rise
to ever-new symbolizations by means of which one endeavours to integrate and
domesticate it, but such attempts are simultaneously condemned to failure. This
115
116
Slavoj Zizek, 'Fantasy as Political Category: A Lacanian Approach', Journal for the
Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society, 1 (1996), 77-85, p. 78.
117
Zizek, 'Fantasy as Political Category', p. 79.
118
Zizek, The Sublime Object, p. 33. For a detailed application, and discussion of the role of
fantasy in Zizek's analysis of ideology, see Yannis Stavrakakis, 'Green Fantasy and the Real of
Nature: Elements of a Lacanian Critique of Green Ideological Discourse', Journal for the
Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society, 2 (1997), 123-32; see specifically nn. 5 and 8.
119
120
2izek, 'The Spectre of Ideology', pp. 21-2 (emphasis in the original).
emphasis on the unsymbolizable real has important consequences for the

operation and analysis of ideological processes through which the subject is
constituted. It is also in this respect that the Lacanian approach differentiates
itself most strongly from a post-Marxist account of ideology. To make clear both
the full implications of this approach and its difference from the approaches
discussed so far, it is useful to give furtherattention to the mannerin which Zizek
distinguishes his approach from post-Marxist ones along two axes: the analysis
of ideology, and the account of the subject.
Zizek argues that post-Marxist discourse analysis leads to a position where
discourse as such is inherently ideological. Analysis of ideology consists of, on
the one hand, symptomal readings which attempt to discern the unavowed bias
of the 'official text' from its fissures, omissions and slips. On the other hand,
it focuses on an investigation of the nodal points, empty signifiers and subject
positions created for identification within such ideologies, around which
antagonisms (friend-enemy distinctions) may arise. He contrasts such an
understanding of ideology and subjectivity with one that aims to take account
of the 'real'.121In the post-Marxist case, he states, what is important is an
understanding of how antagonistic subject positions are structureddiscursively
in opposition to one another. If, however, the dimension of the real is taken into
account, what is important is precisely not to focus on an 'external enemy'.
Zizek argues that it is not this enemy who is preventing me from achieving my
identity since every identity is already in itselfblocked: 'the external enemy is
simply the small piece ... upon which we "project" or "externalize" this
intrinsic, immanent impossibility.' 122With this, we have what Rosen demanded,
a developed anti-rationalist account of the subject which does not capitulate to
the forces of 'unreason'. The terrainof relevant questions has also shifted. Once
the emphasis is on the idea that the identity of the self is always already blocked,
the one who occupies the position of 'the enemy' becomes for all intents and
purposes irrelevant. The important point is to recognize that the subject itself
is an impossible entity and the purpose of ideological analysis is to make this
clear. Taking the example of the Fascist construction of 'the Jew', Zizek argues
that 'the Jew' is:
just the embodiment of a certain blockage - of the impossibility which prevents

society from achieving its full identityas a closed, homogeneous totality ... Society
is not preventedfrom achieving its full identity because of the Jews: it is prevented
by its own antagonisticnature,by its own immanentblockage, and it 'projects'this
internal negativity into the figure of the 'Jew'.123
121
It is importantto note that there is a great deal of mutual interaction and borrowing between
post-Marxist and psychoanalytic approaches to the theory of ideology. It is thus not always possible
to establish as sharpa distinction as Zizek proposes here. Zizek' s reading, for instance, does not take
account of the role of the idea of 'dislocation' in Laclau' s work, which occupies a position analogous
to the real in Lacanian psychoanalysis. Zizek, moreover, is extremely hostile to deconstruction and
this influences his reading of post-Marxist theories that draw on insights from Derrida.
122
Zizek, 'Beyond Discourse Analysis', pp. 251-2.
123
342 NORVAL
In short, the criticism pertinent to ideology is not to account for the 'positive'
constructions of the enemy, but to focus on the fact that such positivizations are
instantiations of the impossibility of the ideological edifice.'24 Thus, this
theorization puts the theory of ideology, understood as an analysis of
decontestations (of political concepts, identities and imaginaries), radically into
question. Ideological analysis here is solely concerned with the formal
misrecognition at the heart of the ideological fantasy, and not with the manner
in which sedimented, decontested images operate in the workings of ideological
discourse. Psychoanalysis informs us that identity, society and ideology are all
impossible.'25 Ideological analysis consists in revealing that impossibility. The
bulk of the analytical focus is thus directed to a radical (re)contestation of any
decontested terms and identities, and any investigation of the decontested
representations themselves can only feed into the ideological fantasy itself.
(DE/RE)CONTESTATION AND THE TASK OF ANALYSING IDEOLOGY:

A RECAPITULATION
One of the main axes around which contemporary theories of ideology are
organized is that of contestation/decontestation. Thus far, I have argued that the
balance tends to shift from decontestation to (re)contestation as we move from
morphological to post-Marxist and, finally, to psychoanalytic approaches to
ideology. I have also attempted to indicate some of the consequences these
differences in emphasis may have for constituting one's object of analysis.
Before concluding, I would like to reflect somewhat further on this issue, and
specifically on the fecundity of each approach for analysing ideological
phenomena.'26 In this respect, I would argue, it is important to draw out
variations in method and focus of analysis, while also reflecting on the role and
function of ideological analysis per se.
Freeden's morphological approach greatly advances the conceptual analysis
of concrete ideologies, not only because the details of this approach are clearly
fleshed out theoretically, but because it offers systematic methodological
guidelines for an investigation of the internal structuring of ideologies.
Moreover, the fecundity of his theoretical and methodological insights is clearly
demonstrated in his own accounts of liberalism, conservatism, socialism,
124
125
Bennington beratesZizek for this dimension of the analysis. He argues that 'in Zizek's readings
... Pascal, Hitchcock, Woody Allen, anti-Semitism ... all turnout to be merely ratherfunny instances
of what Lacan-Hegel has already said. In Zizek's account, the dimension of ... "politics" is radically
foreclosed, because nothing can happen that is not already recognizable ... as the truthalready given
in [Zizek's presentation of] Hegel and Lacan.' (See Geoffrey Bennington, Legislations: The Politics
of Deconstruction (London: Verso, 1994), p. 6.)
126 It has to be pointed out that, of the theorists discussed, Freeden is the only one that offers
sustained and detailed analysis of contemporary political ideologies. It could also be argued that the
lack of such analysis in Zizek's work stems directly from his view of ideology and the task of
analysing ideology.
feminism and green ideology, which form a major part of Ideologies and
Political Theory.127 It is not possible here to do justice to the nuanced analyses
and insights Freeden's work yields. Nevertheless, it is important to emphasize
a number of particularly important points that can be gleaned from his work.
Earlier I have outlined some of the conceptual tools developed by Freeden for
analysing the morphology of ideologies. Now I would like to concentrate on
how they allow one to make sense of the phenomenon of intra-ideological
change.128 The phenomenon of intra-ideological change is of considerable
significance because, if one cannot fall back on 'essential' features to delimit
any particular ideological configuration, then one may legitimately be asked
how one would account for ideological change. In other words, change
presupposes some identity, and one of the main strengths of Freeden's work is
that it offers a clear way of identifying ideological configurations without,
simultaneously, assuming that they have to consist of essential and necessary
elements.129This raises the following question: is there a point at which so many
of the elements of an ideological configuration have been changed, that a
particular formation no longer belongs to a specific ideological family?
Freeden' s response to this question is an unequivocal 'yes'. This is demonstrated
in his analysis of libertarianism as a 'liberal pretender'. Libertarianism claims
to be part of the liberal family.'30 Yet, Freeden argues, it is not, since it lacks
'many of the attributes which bestow on the liberal profile its distinctive
contours.' 13 What makes it possible for Freeden to make this judgement? The
answer is to be found in his emphasis on the configuration of concepts that
typifies mature liberalism, and the balance between different elements of this
configuration. While libertarianism is etymologically related to liberalism,
Freeden argues that it 'eschews the unique configuration of concepts thattypifies
liberalism, preferring instead to overemphasize heavily one concept (liberty) at
the expense of others.' 132It also tends to surroundliberty with adjacent concepts
127
Of these, the parts on liberalism, conservatism and socialism especially are so substantive that
they deserve to be reviewed in their own right.
128
Freeden's analysis, as pointed out earlier, also offers important insights into the relations
between ideological families. This is clearly illustrated in his discussion of the relation between
liberalism, libertarianismand conservatism, and is made possible by the fact that Freeden questions
the idea, informing much analysis in this field, that ideological families consist of mutually exclusive
systems of ideas. This allows him to give attention to the mannerin which a movement of ideas from
one family of ideologies to another may occur. Crucial to this process is the ideational environment
that places main concepts into particularmodes of meaning. He argues that social and culturalfactors
'conspire to reformulatethe denotation of a specific configurationof political terms' making possible
such movements. See, especially, Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory, chaps. 7 and 9.
129 There is more than one
way in which this issue could be answered. Freeden's response retains
an emphasis on the internal structuringof ideologies, while Laclau and Mouffe's response to this
question is developed from a passage through the external differentiation of an ideology. I return
to this point below.
130 A
post-Marxist analysis would have no way of contesting this claim, other than pointing to
other discourses that may do so.
131
132
344 NORVAL
drawn from a conservative political culture. Liberalism, on this reading, has

achieved a certain maturity in terms of the internal sophistication of arguments
and of their applicability to societies, while libertarianism falls well short of
these. First, libertarianism lacks both core and adjacent concepts available in
more complex liberal structures and, secondly, it is not a response to the broad
cultural requirements of a society. There are, therefore, clear requirements for
considering degrees of ideological change. Some of them may be specific to a
particular ideological family, such as the specific balance between elements in
liberalism,'33 while others, such as the success of an ideology, would hold for
any ideological configuration. From this example, extensively elaborated by
Freeden, several important conclusions could be drawn. The first concerns the
significance of 'complexity' and 'maturity' in morphological analysis. While
Freeden argues that complexity is not a recommendation in itself, as I have
argued earlier, it is clear that some dimensions of a morphological inquiry may
be suitable only to particularly 'evolved', complex ideologies in which there is
a degree of stability both in the core elements and in the range of adjacent
concepts. This brings us back to the emphasis on ideology as decontestation. A
clear link obviously exists between degrees of stability and decontestation of
core and adjacent concepts. This emphasis on the internal relatively stable
dimensions of ideological configurations is what distinguishes morphological
analysis most clearly from other contemporary approaches to the study of
ideology.
While there is a degree of overlap with the post-Marxist approachto ideology,
the emphasis in the latter case begins to shift considerably from the 'positive'
to the 'negative' conceptions of the identity of an ideology. That is, while the
theoretical tools developed from within the post-Marxist horizon do focus on
how different discursive elements may be articulated together, and while the
ideological coincides with the decontested, the bulk of theoretical effort is not
directed at the analysis of the internal structuring and 'identity' of ideological
configurations, but at the question of their limits.134From this point of view,
what is important about myths and imaginaries is how their identity is given in
their differentiation from what falls outside them. This results from the specific
manner in which an anti-essentialist critique has been developed in the
post-Marxist tradition. The general tenor of this critique suggests that it is not
possible to combine a 'positive' characterization of the elements of an
ideological configuration with a non-essentialist grasp of those elements. For
Laclau, for instance, if one were to characterize the 'nature' of any system or
identity, the crucial point is not to look for positive or differential features since
the very possibility of the system depends upon a moment of radical exclusion
or negativity which can only be approximately incarnated in empty signifiers.
133 As Freeden shows, socialism would be structurally dissimilar.

134 This is a result of the
particular intellectual trajectory of post-Marxist approaches, and the
manner in which it has tended to develop its anti-essentialist critique. For a full discussion of this
issue, see AlettaJ. Norval, 'Frontiersin Question', Acta Philosophica, 18 (1997), 51-75, pp. 53-61.
As I have argued above, what is crucial in the analysis of ideological formations

is to investigate the manner in which such empty signifiers function. To take an
example of the Tsarist regime, Laclau argues that 'we can represent the Tzarist
regime as a repressive order by enumerating the differential kinds of oppression
that it imposed on various sections of the population as much as we want,' but,
he continues, 'such enumeration will not give us the specificity of the repressive
moment', because 'each instance of the repressive power counts as a pure bearer
of the negation of the identity of the repressed sector'.135 This focus has clear
implications for the issue of contestation and decontestation. The emphasis on
frontiers or limits, it is argued, reveals the 'true', that is, 'negative' character
of identity. The decontestation that is characteristic of the way ideologies
operate, thus, depends upon the limit, which is simultaneously a condition for
closure and the mark of the impossibility of such decontestation.
The post-Marxist account of the functioning of decontestation therefore
introduces an added dimension into the treatment of 'identity'. It is this
dimension which is driven to its logical conclusion in psychoanalytic accounts
of the functioning of ideologies. This becomes abundantly clear with reference
to the example of 'the Jew' discussed above. In the post-Marxist account, the
analysis of the functioning of the empty signifier and of the construction of
political frontiers retains a degree of specificity, of reference to this empty
signifier. In the case of the psychoanalytic account of 'the Jew', what is crucial
is not the fact that 'the Jew' occupies this place, but that it is a signifier for the
impossibility of identity tout court.136 Here the emphasis has shifted almost
completely away from the actual embodiments of political identities, towards
the dimension of impossibility. What gets occluded here is the very real
antagonisms and shifting alliances in favour of a hypostatization of 'radical
impossibility'.l37 In this respect, the question arises as to what extent this
characterization can be useful in the analysis of the specificities characteristic
of different political ideologies. Does not this emphasis on impossibility lead
us away from an engagement with the world of politics, from a concern with
the implications of how this or that embodiment is significant, if not crucial, to
an understandingof the operation of ideologies as they function today, and have
functioned in the past?
If Zizek's account of ideology drives us towards an emptying out of the
specificity of ideological forms, it does, nevertheless, provide us with an
important way of addressing the question of the relation between ideology and
135 Laclau, 'Empty Signifiers', p. 41.

136
It is important to note that post-Marxist and psychoanalytic approaches are in agreement on
the idea that the figure occupying this position - in this case 'the Jew' - is a contingent embodiment
of this impossibility. 'The Jew' is not a positive cause of social negativity but, as Zizek makes
abundantlyclear, 'a point at which social negativity as such assumes positive existence' (Zizek, The
Sublime Object, p. 127). The difference between the two approaches is to be found in what is
prioritized in the analysis.
137 Elizabeth J. Bellamy, 'Discourses of
Impossibility: Can Psychoanalysis be Political?'
Diacritics, 23 (1993), 24-38, pp. 33-4.
346 NORVAL
critique. This account retains a dichotomy, at the root of the Marxist tradition,
between 'description' and 'critique', but reformulates it in terms of the
constitutive dimension of 'impossibility' and the role of the psychoanalytic
account of fantasy outlined above. We are, therefore, no longer in a position to
offer critique from a position of substantive knowledge (such as the movement
of history and the laws of capitalism). Rather, the possibility of critique now
arises from a negative account of identity and the impossibility of achieving
knowledge of the real. Zizek argues that the inherent limit that traverses society
and prevents it from constituting itself as a positive, complete, self-enclosed
entity, is also what allows for the retention of a critical distance:
although no clear line of demarcation separates ideology from reality, although
ideology is always alreadyat workin everythingwe experienceas 'reality',we must
none the less maintainthe tension that keeps the critique of ideology alive ... it is
possible to assume a place that enables us to keep a distance from it, but this place
from which one can denounce ideology must remain empty, it cannot be occupied
by any positively determined reality - the moment we yield to this temptation, we
are back in ideology.138
On this reading, any attempt to develop intra-ideological criticism could not but
reinforce the ideological attitude as such. Even though the emphasis on
impossibility reveals the ultimately ideological character of all positivizations,
it remains questionable whether this conception of critique is adequate for
political analysis. In this respect, post-Marxist and morphological approaches
to the study and critique of ideology are far more attuned to the continued need
to give attention to the role and operation of the mechanisms that make the
illusion of closure, or to put it differently, the ideological decontestations,
possible. Here critique may be understood to encompass what Freeden calls 'an
appraisive handling',139which does not deflect attention from the product itself,
and which does not deflate its status and value, 'both as an intellectual
phenomenon and as a means through which social understanding may be
attained'.140In political analysis one needs to go beyond the assertion of the
ultimate impossibility of reaching complete knowledge of the real towards an
analysis of the mechanisms which make the illusion of reality possible. This
involves serious engagement with the dimension of that which is decontested,
with the 'positive' characterizations of identities and concepts, as well as with
the specificity of the exclusions necessary to establish those decontestations.
Otherwise, we forever run the risk of remaining detached and of pretending that
we can occupy a position entirely outside ideological discourse.
138
Zizek, 'The Spectre of Ideology', p. 17 (emphasis in the original).
139
140

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The Things We Do with Words - Contemporary Approaches to the Analysis of Ideology

Author(s): Aletta J. Norval

Review Article: The Things We Do with

The making of society is the finding of common meanings and directions.

It is frequently asserted that we live in a post-metaphysical world, a world devoid

the laws governing it, to sovereign conceptions of subjectivity - the linguistic

10 These assumptions were, of course, most evident in traditionalMarxist accounts of ideology.

of ideology will be analysed in this respect: morphological, post-Marxist,

RECLAIMING IDEOLOGY: THE REBIRTH OF CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

What seemed to many, about 1956, the subversion of political philosophy by

If the ubiquity of ideology is taken as a starting-point of analysis, several

in Ideologies and Political Theory, Michael Freeden argues that, in opposition

expressly argued for in Skinner's work is an understanding of ideology as

This emphasis on the importance of studying the formation of a 'common

dimension of analysis which is crucial to the study of ideologies: the question

CONCEPTUAL DECONTESTATION AND MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

Ideologies [are] those systems of political thinking, loose or rigid, deliberate or

In Freeden's morphological approach the field of ideologies as a specific object

the monolithic certainty which is the unavoidable feature of a political

Freeden introduces the idea of a morphology of political concepts and

table, though explicable in particular contexts and circumstances.'64 These

DISCURSIVE DECONTESTATION: MYTHS, IMAGINARIES AND EMPTY

The social world presentsitself to us, primarily,as a sedimentedensemble of social

There is a remarkable coincidence between the morphological approach to

extensively on insights from a diverse body of social, political, psychological

of hegemony and ideology. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy develops a critique

is done through the constitution of a new 'space of representation'.79A myth,

democratically elected government. This has not occurred without difficulty.

91 The main limitation of this formulation is that it

impossible fullness of the community.93And this impossibility becomes visible

DECONTESTATION: FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE INTELLIGIBILITY

If the ideological function par excellence is the attempt to dissimulate the

Rosen's account, as he makes clear at the outset, is premised upon a certain

99 Austin draws attention to the

ideology - a theory presented as an objective attempt to understand the nature

it is quite possible and, I would argue, illuminating to regardthis as a restatement

DECONTESTATION: INTRODUCING THE REAL

Ideology is not simply a 'false consciousness', an illusory representationof reality,

ideology. Claude Lefort, in The Political Forms of Modern Society, provides an

1ll Lefort, Political Forms of Modem Society,

falsehood very well, one is aware of the particularinterest behind an ideological

emphasis on the unsymbolizable real has important consequences for the

just the embodiment of a certain blockage - of the impossibility which prevents

(DE/RE)CONTESTATION AND THE TASK OF ANALYSING IDEOLOGY:

drawn from a conservative political culture. Liberalism, on this reading, has

133 As Freeden shows, socialism would be structurally dissimilar.

As I have argued above, what is crucial in the analysis of ideological formations

135 Laclau, 'Empty Signifiers', p. 41.

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