An introduction to the special issue on

‘Discourse Theory: Ways forward for

theory development and research practice’
Benjamin De Cleen,1 Jana Goyvaerts,1 Nico Carpentier,2
Jason Glynos,3 Yannis Stavrakakis4 and
Ilija Tomanić Trivundža5
1
Vrije Universiteit Brussel | 2 Charles University | 3 University of Essex |
4
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki | 5 University of Ljubljana

This article introduces the special issue of the Journal of Language and Poli-
tics on ‘Discourse Theory: Ways forward for theory development and
research practice.’ In this introduction we discuss the aims and structure of
this special issue focused on the development of the poststructuralist and
post-Marxist discourse theory originally developed by Ernesto Laclau and
Chantal Mouffe.

Keywords: discourse theory, discourse analysis, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal

Mouffe

1. Aims and structure of the special issue

This special issue of the Journal of Language and Politics considers the past, pre-
sent and future of discourse theory (henceforth DT) as a conceptual framework
and interdisciplinary research practice that is deployed across a wide range of
fields, including political studies, discourse studies, media and communication
studies, critical management studies, and policy studies. Our focus here is on
work inspired by the poststructuralist and post-Marxist discourse theory origi-
nally developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985), but one central aim
of the special issue is to highlight the interdisciplinarity of DT and the dialogue
between DT and other traditions.
The special issue builds on work presented at the conference Discourse The-
ory: Ways Forward, organized in Brussels on 7 and 8 February 2019 by the Center

https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.20077.dec | Published online: 14 December 2020

Journal of Language and Politics 20:1 (2021), pp. 1–9. issn 1569-2159 | e‑issn 1569-9862
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
2 Benjamin De Cleen et al.

for the Study of Democracy, Signification and Resistance.1 Bringing together over
120 participants with an interest in poststructuralist discourse analysis across dis-
ciplines, the conference illustrated the vivacity of DT whilst giving an indication
of what preoccupies scholars working with DT at this moment in time and how
they see new research developing in the near future.
There are eleven articles in this collection. Following the English translation
of a text by Ernesto Laclau hitherto only published in French – Politics as Con-
struction of the Unthinkable – the ten subsequent polemic-programmatic articles
reflect on ways forward for DT. The aim being to further DT, our invitation to the
authors, originating from different disciplines, was to critically and constructively
engage with DT, reflect on its strengths but also its limitations, and to propose
paths for future theoretical development as well as for rigorous and innovative
research practice.
In a jointly written position paper, we, as editors of this special issue, have
structured our own reflections and the reflections of the authors in the special
issue on the ways forward for DT. These reflections are organized around five top-
ics: (1) the theory-analysis dialectic, (2) the logics approach, (3) the discursive and
the material, (4) the role of fantasy and other psychoanalytical categories, and (5)
populism.
The articles in the special issue touch on all these five topics. Most of the arti-
cles touch upon more than one of these domains, but they also extend beyond
these five and highlight their own theoretical and topical concerns, building on
authors’ particular disciplinary backgrounds and research interests. The articles
in the special issue deal with the need to further develop the DT framework
in dialogue with other traditions in ideology studies (Michael Freeden); with
the methodological development of the logics approach in DT (Jason Glynos,
David Howarth, Ryan Flitcroft, Craig Love, Konstantinos Roussos, and Jimena
Vazquez); with the place of the concept of fantasy in the DT framework (Glynos)
and in the study of discourses on nature and the environment more specifically
(Jelle Behagel and Aysem Mert); with the mutual relation between discourse and
materiality and how to theorize and analyze it (Nico Carpentier; Tom Bartlett
and Nicolina Montesina Montessori); with the need for discourse theory to
engage with visuality in more depth, exemplified through an analysis of news
photography (Ilija Tomanić Trivundža and Andreja Vezovnik); and with DT’s
contribution to the study of populism, with one article on the limitations of left
populism (Yannis Stavrakakis) and one questioning certain problems with the
emerging field of ‘populism studies’ (Benjamin De Cleen and Jason Glynos).

1. See https://www.researchcenterdesire.eu.
 Introduction to special issue on discourse theory 3

2. Politics as construction of the unthinkable

The first article in the special issue is a text by the late Ernesto Laclau. Politics as
Construction of the Unthinkable is the English translation (by Marianne Liisberg,
Arthur Borriello and Benjamin De Cleen) of a chapter published originally in
French in the proceedings of the conference Matérialités Discursives held at Uni-
versité Paris X – Nanterre in 1980 (Laclau, 1981).2 Based on an analysis of the dis-
course of the Komintern about popular front strategy, the text criticizes orthodox
Marxism’s economic determinism. Instead, Laclau argues, we should understand
politics as a struggle in which different forces seek to define the thinkable and
the unthinkable. The text illustrates the (original) strength of the DT conceptual
framework as the basis for political analysis and shows some of the major theoret-
ical (post-Marxist and post-structuralist) moves associated with DT. For instance,
Laclau writes in this piece that:

Political analysis has traditionally been limited by the assumption that objective
social relations have an underlying logic that is distinct and more limited than
the possible discursive positions. But if this assumption is abandoned, the field
of social logics is extended enormously. We could then speak of a ’poetic’ of the
political which would not be restricted to the secondary aspects of the latter but
which would enter into the very constitution of these political subjects.

We see here the post-Marxist rejection of the ontology of Marxist economic deter-
minism in favour of a DT approach: rather than treating politics as the result of
objective determinants underlying social relations, Laclau argues, political analy-
sis should concentrate on how subjects and identities are constructed discursively
in politics. Politics, then, becomes a matter of hegemonic struggle, defined in this
piece as revolving around the constitution of “the conditions of thinkability of cer-
tain objects through the construction of the unthinkability of other objects”.
The text moves from this ontological argument about “the discursive produc-
tion of society” (as against (orthodox Marxist) determinist explanations of social
processes) to the critical-normative question “whether certain discursive practices
[when they achieve hegemony], through the creation of certain forms of relations
between objects, do not have totalising effects of meaning”. Whilst not developed
explicitly in Laclau’s article in this special issue, this question points to a critical
outlook that would be developed in much more detail in Laclau’s (and Mouffe’s)
later work (e.g. Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Mouffe 2005) as well as in the work of
others. This normative position and the conception of critique that comes with it

2. The editors would like to thank Chantal Mouffe and Catherine Denys (Presses Universi-
taires de Lille) for their kind permission to translate and republish this text.
4 Benjamin De Cleen et al.

revolves around the democratic desirability of the recognition of the contingent,

open-ended and, indeed, political character of societal arrangements.
In its seamless moving from the ontological to the critical – from statements
about the nature of the social as contingent, open-ended, and political to nor-
mative and ethical positions about the desirability of (the recognition of ) contin-
gency and open-endedness – Politics as Construction of the Unthinkable illustrates
a move that would come to characterize much of Laclau’s (and Mouffe’s) work.
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, (Laclau
and Mouffe 1985) to name the best-known example, is a book about the inevitabil-
ity of the operation of hegemony and a plea to base left-wing politics on hege-
monic strategies. Mouffe’s (2005) work ‘on the political’ is also a plea ‘for the
political’. And Laclau’s (2005) and Mouffe’s (2018) works ‘on populist reason’ are
also defenses of and indeed pleas ‘for populist politics’ that, moreover, revolve
around the claim that populism is (democratic) politics par excellence.

3. Inspiration and further development

Only a few pages long, Politics as Construction of the Unthinkable illustrates the
nature and strength of DT as a poststructuralist and post-Marxist framework for
analysis and critique. The articles in this collection build on the framework and
insights developed by Laclau in this text and in subsequent work developed by
Laclau, Mouffe and later generations of scholars working with DT. At the same
time, our aim with this special issue is also very explicitly to critically engage with
the DT tradition, reflect on its shortcomings, weaknesses and peculiarities in an
open manner and suggest ways to deal with the tradition’s blind spots and ten-
sions. Some of these are already present in the Laclau text included here. Indeed,
a critical reading of this early text in the DT tradition hints at a number of largely
implicit characteristics and also limitations and blind spots of DT more generally
that a special issue on ways forward for DT needs to make explicit and explore
head-on.
One such issue, as the above discussion already indicates, is the close relation
between the ontological and the normative-critical. Several articles in this special
issue engage explicitly with the issue of what ‘critique’ means in DT and how
the critical and the normative relate to ontological stances, conceptual develop-
ment and empirical preoccupations. Michael Freeden reflects on the nature of
critique in DT, critical discourse analysis and ideology studies. Jason Glynos,
David Howarth, Ryan Flitcroft, Craig Love, Konstantinos Roussos, and Jimena
Vazquez reflect on what the logics approach has contributed to DT as a frame-
work for analysis and critique, and how to develop it further. Jason Glynos’ article
 Introduction to special issue on discourse theory 5

on Critical Fantasy Studies asks what the concept of fantasy has to add to DT and
how analyses focused on fantasy can be made ‘critical’. Benjamin De Cleen and
Jason Glynos, in their article Beyond Populism Studies, ask what the downsides
might be of DT’s preoccupation with populism, both as an object of analysis and
as a prescribed political strategy. And Yannis Stavrakakis, whilst appreciating the
democratic potentials of populism, turns his attention to the limits of populism
as a strategy for the left.
Another issue, which is also visible in the relation between the ontological
and the critical-normative, is the intricacy of the DT framework and particularly
the tendency for different concepts to be very closely related. This has led to the
criticism that different elements of the DT conceptual framework start to mean
the same thing, thus undermining the conceptual strength of each of them. This
has been noted most forcefully in response to Laclau’s work on populism. Laclau’s
conceptualisation of populism as politics par excellence – that is, as a politics
governed by the logic of equivalence and therefore by hegemonic operations – it
has been argued, has led to an overlap between the concepts of politics, hege-
mony, logic of equivalence, populism and democracy (see Beasley-Murray 2006;
Mazzolini 2020).
Some DT work on populism by other authors drawing on the DT tradition
has indeed been focused on undoing this overlap by identifying more explicitly
the specificity of populism as compared to other political phenomena, including
nationalism (e.g. Anastasiou 2019; De Cleen and Stavrakakis 2017; Palonen 2018;
Sunnercrantz 2020). The articles on populism in this special issue build on these
more precise and modest conceptualizations of populism. Much broader in scope,
Jason Glynos et al.’s disentangling of social, political and fantasmatic logics can
also be considered an effort to strengthen the DT framework’s analytical potential
by taking it apart into more precise building blocks and protecting the specificity
of these building blocks (see also Glynos and Howarth 2007). The articles by Nico
Carpentier and Tom Bartlett and Nicolina Montesano Montesssori in this collec-
tion on the relations between the discursive and the material can also be seen as
unpacking the specificities of these two dimensions as a means of refining the DT
framework. Ilija Tomanić Trivundža and Andreja Vezovnik unpack the notions of
‘empty signifier’ and ‘floating signifier’ in their analysis of ‘symbolic photographs’.
As these examples already indicate, the further development of DT also
implies engaging thoroughly with other traditions. The articles in this special
issue do exactly this. Michael Freeden’s article Discourse, Concepts, Ideologies:
Pausing for Thought suggests a stronger dialogue between DT and morphological
approaches to ideology. Glynos, Howarth, Flitcroft, Roussos, Love and Vasquez’
article, in further developing the logics approach to DT, engages with method-
ological criticisms of DT and with the range of disciplines that have used the
6 Benjamin De Cleen et al.

logics approach and the questions raised through such applications. Jason Gly-
nos’ article on Critical Fantasy Studies and Jelle Behagel and Aysem Mert’s The
Political Nature of Fantasy and Political Fantasies of Nature put DT in dialogue
with psychoanalysis and other fields to further develop the analytical power of
the category of fantasy in DT. In his article on Doing Justice to the Agential
Material: A Reflection on a Non-hierarchical Repositioning of the Discursive and
the Material, Nico Carpentier confronts DT with new materialism in construct-
ing a framework for grasping the dynamic interconnections between the dis-
cursive and the material. Approaching this relation from a different angle, Tom
Bartlett and Nicolina Montesina Montessori draw on critical discourse analy-
sis and reflections on ‘scales’ (Blommaert 2007) to theorize the “constraints and
affordances of the material conditions on the structuring of the […] discursive
field”. For their part, Ilija Tomanić Trivundža and Andreja Vezovnik, in applying
the notions of empty and floating signifiers to symbolic news photographs, con-
sider DT’s relevance to the study of photography in dialogue with, amongst oth-
ers, Derrida’s work.
Finally, this special issue is also a plea to extend the interdisciplinary tradition
of DT to even more fields of inquiry and territories, and to strengthen its already-
existing extensions. One extension highlighted in this special issue is the role DT
has to play in studying the (construction of the) environment, human-animal
relations, biodiversity, climate change, sustainability, and ‘naturecultures’. In this
special issue, three articles explicitly bring DT into the realm of ecology (and
the other way around). Jelle Behagel and Aysem Mert’s text is an analysis of fan-
tasies of nature, and a critique on the nature-culture binary. Tom Bartlett and
Nicolina Montesano Montessori’s article includes a case study on the contested
nature of the sustainability signifier, as articulated by a fishing community and
a government organisation. And Nico Carpentier’s article includes a case study
on the Prague Zoo wolf assemblage, moving into the field of (the discursive-
material construction of ) human-animal relations. The COVID-19 pandemic and
its effects only make such considerations more important, and draw our attention
to “virusnatureculture”, and to the agency of viruses and discourses on viruses,
death and health.
Across their different disciplinary backgrounds, positions towards DT and
topical interests, all authors included in this special issue share a concern with
the development of DT as an interdisciplinary theoretical orientation, as research
practice and as critical endeavor, and with the importance of dialogue and inter-
action between theory, critique and research practice. All aim to contribute to
the accessibility and tangible relevance of DT as a framework open to scholars
working within discourse studies and beyond, and across a variety of disciplines.
This special issue thus becomes an invitation to readers already familiar with DT
 Introduction to special issue on discourse theory 7

to critically consider its accomplishments, potentials, limitations, and ways for-

ward. To readers not familiar with DT, it is an open invitation to familiarize them-
selves more with DT, consider deploying it in their own research, and/or critically
engage with its theory development and research practice.

Acknowledgements

The editors would like to warmly thank Michał Krzyżanowski, editor-in-chief of the Journal of
Language and Politics, for his support throughout the process of putting together this special
issue.

References

Anastasiou, Michaelangelo. 2019. “Of Nation and People: The Discursive Logic of Nationalist
Populism.” Javnost – The Public 26 (3): 330–345.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2019.160656
Beasley-Murray, Jon. 2006. “Review of ‘On populist Reason’ (Ernesto Laclau) & ‘Populism and
the mirror of democracy’ (Francisco Panizza (ed.)).” Contemporary Political Theory 5:
362–367. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300255
Blommaert, Jan. 2007. “Sociolinguistic scales.” Intercultural Pragmatics 4 (1): 1–19.
https://doi.org/10.1515/IP.2007.001
De Cleen, Benjamin, and Yannis Stavrakakis. 2017. “Distinctions and articulations. A
discourse-theoretical framework for the study of populism and nationalism.” Javnost –
The Public 24(4): 301–319. https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2017.1330083
Glynos, Jason, and David Howarth. 2007. Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political
Theory. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203934753
Laclau, Ernesto. 1981. “La politique comme construction de l’impensable.” In Matérialités
Discursives: Colloque des 24, 25, 26 avril 1980, Université Paris X – Nanterre, edited by
Bernard Conein, Jean-Jacques Courtine, Françoise Gadet, Jean-Marie Marandin,
Michel Pêcheux, 65–74. Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille.
Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason. London: Verso.
Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso.
Mazzolini, Samuele. 2020. “Populism Is not Hegemony: Towards a Re-Gramscianization of
Ernesto Laclau.” Theory & Event 23 (3): 765–786. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article
/760421
Mouffe, Chantal. 2005. On the Political. London: Routledge.
Mouffe, Chantal. 2018. For a Left Populism. London: Verso.
Palonen, Emilia. 2018. “Performing the nation: the Janus-faced populist foundations of
illiberalism in Hungary.” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 26(3): 308–321.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2018.1498776
8 Benjamin De Cleen et al.

Sunnercrantz, Liv. 2020. “Vom Gegner lernen. Der anti-etatistische und nicht-nationalistische
Populismus der neoliberalen Rechten in Schweden.” In Populismus, Diskurs, Staat, edited
by Seongcheol Kim and Aristotelis Agridopoulos, 167–190. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
https://doi.org/10.5771/9783748920885‑167

Address for correspondence

Benjamin De Cleen
Department of Communication Studies
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Pleinlaan 2
B-1050 Brussel
Belgium
bdecleen@vub.be

Biographical notes

Benjamin De Cleen is associate professor at the Communication Studies Department of the

Vrije Universiteit Brussel where he coordinates the English-language master on Journalism
and Media in Europe. His research has mainly been focused on radical right rhetoric, and on
the conceptualization of populism, nationalism and conservatism. His work has appeared in
amongst others Political Studies, Javnost-The Public and the Journal of Political Ideologies. See
https://www.vub.be/en/people/benjamin-de-cleen
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6118-8444

Jana Goyvaerts is a teaching assistant and PhD student at the Department of Communication
Studies of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Her doctoral research focuses on discourses
about populism and on how the meaning of populism is constructed by journalists, politicians
and academics. She graduated in 2017 from the VUB with a thesis on the links between pop-
ulism and social media.

Nico Carpentier is Extraordinary Professor at Charles University in Prague; he also holds part-
time positions at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB – Free University of Brussels), as Associate
Professor, and at Uppsala University, as Senior Researcher. Moreover, he is a Research Fellow at
Loughborough University, and President of the International Association for Media and Com-
munication Research.

Jason Glynos teaches political theory at the Department of Government, University of Essex,
where he is co-director of the Centre for Ideology and Discourse Analysis. He has published in
the areas of poststructuralist discourse theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis, focusing on theo-
ries of ideology, political economy, democracy, and the philosophy and methodology of social
science.
 Introduction to special issue on discourse theory 9

Yannis Stavrakakis studied political science in Athens and discourse analysis at Essex and is
currently Professor of Political Discourse Analysis at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
He is the author of Lacan and the Political (Routledge, 1999) and The Lacanian Left (SUNY
Press, 2007) and co-editor of Discourse Theory and Political Analysis (Manchester University
Press, 2000). He has been Principal Investigator of the international project POPULISMUS,
researching populist discourse and democracy: www.populismus.gr

Ilija Tomanić Trivundža is an Associate Professor at the Department of Media and Com-
munication Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) and a
researcher at Social Communication Research Centre at the same faculty. His primary research
interest spans across the field of visual communication with special focus on social and political
role of photography in contemporary mediated communication. He is the author of Press Pho-
tography and Visual Framing of News (University of Ljubljana/FDV Press) and a co-editor of
Membrana magazine on photography. He is currently serving as President of European Com-
munication Research and Education Association (ECREA).

Publication history

Date received: 5 November 2020

Date accepted: 5 November 2020
Published online: 14 December 2020
Copyright of Journal of Language & Politics is the property of John Benjamins Publishing
Co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv
without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print,
download, or email articles for individual use.