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 Discourse, Culture
STUDIES IN DISCOURSE
POSTDISCIPLINARY

and Organization
Inquiries into Relational
Structures of Power
Edited by Tomas Marttila
Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse

Series Editor
Johannes Angermuller
University of Warwick
Coventry, UK
Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse engages in the exchange between
discourse theory and analysis while putting emphasis on the intellectual
challenges in discourse research. Moving beyond disciplinary divisions in
today’s social sciences, the contributions deal with critical issues at the
intersections between language and society.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14534
 Tomas Marttila
Editor

Discourse, Culture
and Organization
Inquiries into Relational Structures
of Power
Editor
Tomas Marttila
Department of Sociology
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Munich, Germany

Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse

ISBN 978-3-319-94122-6    ISBN 978-3-319-94123-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94123-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018956053

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
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Cover illustration: © MickeyCZ / Getty Images

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Praise for Discourse, Culture and
Organization

“Discourse, Culture and Organization is a highly original contribution to the field

of discourse analysis and an important milestone for the presentation and sys-
tematization of the Essex School with contributions from an outstanding range
of scholars from different countries and disciplines.”
—Daniel Wrana, Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany

“This essential collection makes the insights of the Essex School of ideology and
discourse analysis available to researchers across the social sciences. The range of
expert and timely contributions reminds us of – and extends – the School’s
remarkable theoretical achievements, as well as sites of contestation. But cru-
cially we are shown how the theory translates into a toolkit for empirical, criti-
cally oriented work in specific settings. The result both complements and
challenges more ‘mainstream’ approaches to the study of discourse.”
—Will Leggett, University of Birmingham, UK

v
 Contents

1 Introduction to the Volume   1

Tomas Marttila

Part I Foundations   15

2 Post-foundational Discourse Analysis: Theoretical Premises

and Methodological Options  17
Tomas Marttila

3 Discourse and Heterogeneity  43

Lasse Thomassen

4 Hegemony Analysis: Theory, Methodology and Research

Practice  63
Martin Nonhoff

5 The Retroductive Cycle: The Research Process in

Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis 105
Jason Glynos and David Howarth
vii
viii Contents

Part II Case Studies: Culture, Politics, Populism 127

6 Eating Power: Food, Culture, and Politics 129

Fabio Parasecoli

7 About Dislocations and Invitations: Deepening the

Conceptualization of the Discursive-Material Knot 155
Nico Carpentier

8 Rhetorical-Performative Analysis of the Urban Symbolic

Landscape: Populism in Action 179
Emilia Palonen

9 Solidarity in Europe and the Role of Immigration

Policies: A Discourse Theoretical Perspective 199
Efharis Mascha

10 ‘The People’ and Its Antagonistic Other: The Populist

Right-Wing Movement Pegida in Germany 223
Ronald Hartz

11 ‘Culture’ in German Media Discourses on Refugees:

A Political Geography Perspective 245
Annika Mattissek and Tobias Schopper

12 Populism Versus Anti-populism in the Greek Press:

Post-Structuralist Discourse Theory Meets Corpus
Linguistics 267
Nikos Nikisianis, Thomas Siomos, Yannis Stavrakakis, Titika
Dimitroulia, and Grigoris Markou
 Contents
   ix

Part III Possibilities of Critique 297

13 Tensions in the Post-Althusserian Project: Descriptive

Indeterminacy and Normative Uncertainty 299
Geoff Boucher

14 Post-foundationalism and the Possibility of Critique:

Comparing Laclau and Mouffe 323
Marius Hildebrand and Astrid Séville

15 Post-foundationalism, Systems Theory and the

Impossibility of Critique 343
Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen, Erik Højbjerg, and Anders la Cour

References 367

Index 399
 Notes on Contributors

Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen is a professor at the Department of Management,

Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School. His field is public
administration and welfare management. He is author of Public Management in
Transition: The Orchestration of Potentiality (2016, with Justine Pors), Managing
Intensity and Play at Work (2013) and Power at Play (Palgrave, 2009).
Geoff Boucher researches at Deakin University. He is the author of several
critical engagements in the post-Marxian field of discourse theory and ideology
critique, including Zizek and Politics (2010, with Matt Sharpe), Traversing the
Fantasy (2008, with Jason Glynos and Matt Sharpe) and The Charmed Circle of
Ideology (2008).
Nico Carpentier is Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the
Department of Informatics and Media of Uppsala University. In addition, he
holds two part-time positions, those of Associate Professor at the Communication
Studies Department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB—Free University of
Brussels) and Docent at Charles University in Prague. His latest books are The
Discursive-Material Knot: Cyprus in Conflict and Community Media Participation
(2017); Cyprus and its Conflicts: Representations, Materialities, and Cultures
(2018, co-edited); and Critical Perspectives on Media, Power and Change (2018,
co-edited).
Titika Dimitroulia is Associate Professor of Translation Studies and Director
of the Digital Humanities Laboratory at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
Her research deals with literary translation, translation technologies and digital
xi
xii Notes on Contributors

literary studies. Her recent publications are Literary Translation, Theory and
Practice (in Greek, with Yorgos Kentrotis, 2015) and Digital Literary Studies (in
Greek, with Katerina Tiktopoulou, 2015).
Jason Glynos teaches political theory in the Department of Government at the
University of Essex. He has published in the areas of poststructuralist political
theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis, focusing on themes central to ideology,
democracy, freedom, political economy, and the philosophy and methodology
of social science.
Ronald Hartz is Lecturer in Organisation Studies at the University of Leicester.
He is interested in participation in organizations, alternative forms of work and
organization, critical management studies, organizational esthetics and discourse
analysis. He is the co-editor of a number of books and his work was published,
among others, in Organization and Culture & Organization.
Marius Hildebrand is a postdoctoral sociologist at Goethe University
Frankfurt. His research focuses on discourse theory, governmentality studies and
constitutional politics. He is the author of Rechtspopulismus und Hegemonie: Der
Aufstieg der SVP und die diskursive Transformation der politischen Schweiz (tran-
script, 2017).
Erik Højbjerg is an associate professor at the Department of Management,
Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School and academic director
of its MSc in social sciences programs. His research interest covers corporate
political communication, and his most recent publication is “The Limits of
Ignorance: Financial Literacy and the Corporate Responsibilization to the
Business of Life” (in Soziale Systeme, 2016).
David Howarth teaches on the Ideology and Discourse Analysis program in
the Department of Government at the University of Essex. Recent publications
include Ernesto Laclau (2014), Poststructuralism and After (Palgrave, 2013) and
The Politics of Airport Expansion in the UK (2013).
Anders la Cour is an associate professor at the Department of Management,
Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School. His field of research is
welfare management and voluntary organizations. His latest publications are
“Polyphonic Supervision: Meta-governance in Denmark” (System Research and
Behavioral Science, 2017, with Holger Hoejlund), “In Search of the Relevant
Other: Collaborative Governance in Denmark” (Scandinavian Journal of Public
Administration, 2016), “Metagovernance as Strategic Supervision” (Public
 Notes on Contributors
   xiii

Performance and Management Review, 2016, with Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen),

“A Vanishing Act: The Magical Technology of Invisibility” (Ephemera, 2016,
with Janus Hecht and Maria Stilling).
Grigoris Markou is PhD Candidate in Political Sciences at the Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki, Greece. His PhD research is financially supported by
the General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT) and the Hellenic
Foundation for Research and Innovation (HFRI) (Scholarship Code: 391). His
research interests include Argentinian politics, Greek politics, populism, democ-
racy and radical left parties. He has published articles in international academic
journals and global media platforms about populism and democracy.
Tomas Marttila is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the Ludwig Maximilian
University of Munich. His research examines processes of economization, hege-
monization of the neoliberal culture of enterprise as well as transnational con-
vergence of education policy-making. He is the author of “Neoliberalism,
Knowledge-based Economy and Metaphorization of the Entrepreneur to the
Subject of Creativity” (in Cahill et al. (eds), SAGE Handbook of Neoliberalism,
2018), Post-Foundational Discourse Analysis (Palgrave, 2015) and The Culture of
Enterprise in Neoliberalism (2013).
Efharis Mascha has been an adjourned lecturer at the Hellenic Open University
since 2010. She has also been working in Greece for the Asylum Service since
2013. Her work consists of an array of articles in international and Greek jour-
nals and books on sociology, discourse analysis and cultural studies.
Annika Mattissek is Professor of Economic Geography and Sustainable
Development at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg. Her research inter-
ests include theoretical and methodical aspects of discourse studies, political
geography and society-nature relations. Her latest publications are “Discourse
Analysis in German-language Human Geography: Integrating Theory and
Method” (in Social and Cultural Geography, 2016, with Georg Glasze) and
“How to Make Them Walk the Talk: Governing the Implementation of Energy
and Climate Policies into Local Practices” (in Geographica Helvetica, 2017, with
Cindy Sturm).
Nikos Nikisianis has a natural sciences background, and his PhD thesis
involved a discursive analysis of the ideological dimensions of biodiversity in
scientific ecology. He was a POPULISMUS postdoctoral researcher and has
published on the politics of ecology, populist discourse and the media.
xiv Notes on Contributors

Martin Nonhoff is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Bremen.

His research is dedicated to the theory and methodology of discourse analy-
sis, to radical democratic theory and to theories of power and hegemony. His
publications include Politischer Diskurs und Hegemonie (transcript, 2006)
and Diskursforschung: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch (transcript, 2014,
co-edited).
Emilia Palonen (MA and PhD Essex) is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at
the University of Helsinki, where she teaches ideology and discourse analysis
since 2006 and researches at the Academy of Finland funded consortium on
Mainstreaming Populism (2017–2021). She has published on Hungary, Finland
and European cultural policy.
Fabio Parasecoli is Professor of Food Studies at New York University. His
research focus is on the intersections of food, media and design, as well as on the
dynamics of cultural politics around food. His recent books include Feasting
Our Eyes: Food Films and Cultural Identity in the United States (2016, with Laura
Lindenfeld) and Knowing Where it Comes From: Labeling Traditional Foods to
Compete in a Global Market (2017).
Tobias Schopper is PhD Candidate in Human Geography at the Albert-­
Ludwigs-­University of Freiburg. His research focuses on extreme right move-
ments and their discursive strategies in the digital sphere as well as on the
development of corpus-linguistic methods. He is the author of Korpuslinguistische
Analysen mit CQPweb: Eine Einführung für SozialwissenschaftlerInnen (2017,
with Thilo Wiertz).
Astrid Séville is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Ludwig
Maximilian University of Munich. Her research focuses on political theory, dis-
course and populism. She is the author of “From One Best Way to One Ruinous
Way?” (in European Political Science Review, 2017) and Der Sound der Macht:
Kritik der dissonanten Herrschaft (C.H. Beck, 2018).
Thomas Siomos is Doctoral Candidate in Political Sciences at the Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki. He has been Developing Manager of the
POPULISMUS Observatory of Populist Discourse and Democracy (­http://
observatory.populismus.gr) and remains its web administrator. His research
interests comprise discourse theory, new and traditional media, mediatization,
post-democracy, political communication, cybernetics, systems’ theory, post-
humanism and so on.
 Notes on Contributors
   xv

Yannis Stavrakakis is Professor of Political Discourse Analysis at the School

of Political Sciences of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His research
interests include contemporary political theory, populism, post-democracy
and artistic practices. He is currently editor of the Routledge Handbook of
Psychoanalytic Political Theory and director of the POPULISMUS Observatory
(www.populismus.gr).
Lasse Thomassen is a reader in the School of Politics and International
Relations at Queen Mary, University of London. His current research focuses on
the category of representation and new forms of radical politics. His most recent
book is British Multiculturalism and the Politics of Representation (2017).
 List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Reconstructing strategemes no. I and II in Alfred Müller-

Armack’s Wirtschaftslenkung und Marktwirtschaft90
Fig. 10.1 Nodal point and chains of equivalence 237
Fig. 11.1 Collocators (±4) of the terms ‘culture’ and ‘cultural area’ 256
Fig. 11.2 Selected collocators (−2, +4) of the term ‘cultural’ 256
Fig. 11.3 Discursive network, mutual collocations in the environment
of the lemma ‘culture’ 257
Fig. 12.1 Graphic representation of pro-populist corpus keywords 284
Fig. 12.2 Graphic representation of anti-populist corpus keywords 285
Fig. 15.1 Diagnostics of the present 353
Fig. 15.2 The making of an ‘outside’ from within 354
Fig. 15.3 Epistemological interests 355
Fig. 15.4 The making of outside 358
Fig. 15.5 Accumulation of impractical rights 362

xvii
 List of Tables

Table 4.1 Strategemes of the offensive hegemony strategy 80

Table 10.1 Selection of the 200 most used words in the German
migration discourse 230
Table 11.1 Comparison of attributions to people from other cultures
and to people from Germany in the print media corpus 259
Table 12.1 Selection of material on pro- and anti-populist discourse 271
Table 12.2 Pro-populist and anti-populist blocks in Greek press 274
Table 12.3 Frequency of ‘people’ and ‘populism’ in six Greek newspa-
pers276
Table 12.4 Most frequent collocates of the word ‘the people’ 277
Table 12.5 Most frequent collocates of the word ‘populism’ 278
Table 12.6 Connectivity index of the ten most important keywords in
the pro-populist corpus 282
Table 12.7 Connectivity index of the ten most important keywords in
the anti-populist corpus 283

xix
 1
Introduction to the Volume
Tomas Marttila

Introduction
The ‘discursive turn’ has enriched social research and cultural studies
with new ways of understanding and analyzing the social world as a dis-
cursively constructed reality. While many discourse analysts refer to the
rise of a semiautonomous ‘field of discourse studies’ (e.g., Zienkowski
2017), Angermuller et al. (2014: 3) remind us that different discourse
analytical approaches have always been ‘indebted to … more disciplin-
ary traditions, which provide many productive tools and concepts to
assist in meeting both the theoretical and methodological challenges
involved in Discourse Studies’. The Essex School’s approach to discourse
analysis elaborated in this book is no exception in that regard. The initial
works of its originators—Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (e.g.,
Laclau 1977, 1980; Mouffe 1979)—already provide evidence of the
intellectual inspiration drawn from scientific traditions, which include

T. Marttila (*)
Department of Sociology, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich,
Munich, Germany
e-mail: tomas.marttila@soziologie.uni-muenchen.de

© The Author(s) 2019 1

T. Marttila (ed.), Discourse, Culture and Organization, Postdisciplinary Studies in
Discourse, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94123-3_1
2 T. Marttila

s­ tructuralist theories of culture, discourse and language (e.g., Benveniste,

Foucault Jakobson, Saussure), post-Marxist political theories (e.g.,
Althusser, Balibar, Gramsci), deconstruction (e.g., Derrida), post-­
phenomenological (or rather post-foundational) philosophy (e.g.,
Heidegger, Rancière) and post-Freudian psychoanalysis (e.g., Lacan).
Without any doubt, these intellectual references located at the heart of
the Essex School’s approach have a productive impact on discourse
research because they allow us to cognize and—in a consistent manner—
think about the all-embracing logic of social reality’s discursive structura-
tion. However, this overwhelming intellectual indebtedness also has a
potentially restrictive impact because it runs the risk of postponing or
even completely impeding the possibility to take the step from theorizing
about discourses to analyzing discourses. I am keen on arguing that no
other discourse analytical approach, perhaps apart from some theoreti-
cally and methodologically sophisticated approaches to Foucaultian dis-
course analysis (Diaz-Bone 2006, 2010; Schmidt-Wellenburg 2009,
2014), embraces such a wide span of profound philosophical, theoretical
and methodological ideas related to the discursive structuration of social
reality. At the same time, however, earlier contributions to the Essex
School’s approach to discourse analysis witness a gap between theoretical
and methodical takes on discourses. This implies that discourse scholars
have been either occupied with philosophical and theoretical debates
about discourses and their ontological premises or—to a much lesser
extent—have carried out empirical discourse research.
In my view, the systematic discussion of the discourse-theoretical per-
spective characteristic of the Essex School and the scientific methods
aligned with this theoretical perspective is a relatively recent phenome-
non that set in only around 10–12 years ago (e.g., Howarth 2005, 2006;
Nonhoff 2006; also in this volume). Some recent publications by Glasze
(2007a, b), Glynos and Howarth (2007, 2008), Marttila (2015a, b,
2018) and Zienkowski (2012) have gone a decisive methodical step fur-
ther by starting to systematically discuss how the discursive structuration
of reality manifests itself in empirical terms and what methods of empiri-
cal social research make it possible to locate and study these manifesta-
tions of discursivity in empirical material. It is apparent that the above
described gap between discourse theory and empirical discourse analysis
 Introduction to the Volume 3

has not just begun to wither away, but the center of gravity has also
moved toward empirical research. Based on my own experience gained
from teaching the Essex School’s approach in postgraduate research and
method courses, the philosophical and theoretical background of this
particular strand of discourse analysis has often an intimidating impact
on students. Many of them seem to fear that they have to invest a vast
amount of time in theory work before they get even close to planning and
carrying out empirical analysis. Indeed, in contrast to many more prag-
matic and less theoretically elaborate language-centered approaches to
discourse analysis (e.g., interpretative discourse analysis, conversation
analysis, corpus linguistics), the Essex School’s approach to discourse
analysis departs from a particular theoretical understanding of discourses
and logics of discursive structuration of the reality. Hence, the method-
ologization and methodical operationalization of the Essex School’s
approach must take place against the background of its characteristic
discourse-theoretical framework. Torfing (2005: 24) cautions that we
should not fall prey to a ‘discourse theory light’ and ‘merely pick up a few
concepts and argument’ from the Essex School’s discourse theory but
instead become aware of the ‘methodological choices’ it opens up for an
‘analysis of specific discursive formations’ in a more thoroughly and
reflected manner (ibid., p. 25). In other words, it would be worthwhile
thinking about and utilizing the Essex School’s approach in terms of
‘heuristic theory’ that provides ‘a body of propositions’ that on their part
can ‘serve to map out the problem area and thus prepare the ground for
its empirical investigation by appropriate methods’ (Nadel 1962: 1).
There is growing awareness about the theoretically informed logic of
discourse research (see Nonhoff and Glynos and Howarth in this volume).
For example, Glynos and Howarth (2007) make the case for a ‘retroduc-
tive’ logic which basically denotes that empirical discourse analysis must
be conducted in the form of a dialogue between theoretical premises and
the methodical options they provide. This volume’s primary aim is to
make a crucial contribution to the further methodologization and opera-
tionalization of the Essex School’s approach so as to make it a viable
alternative to discourse analytical approaches that take dominant posi-
tions in today’s ‘field of discourse studies’. Reflecting the nature of the
task ahead, this edited volume includes contributions that tackle and
4 T. Marttila

­ iscuss theoretical, methodological and research pragmatic issues related

d
to the Essex School’s approach. This is the first English edited volume,
which follows Howarth et al.’s (2000) Discourse Theory and Political
Analysis, Critchley and Marchart’s (2004) Laclau: A Critical Reader and
Howarth and Torfing’s (2005) Discourse Theory in European Politics, and
gathers international discourse scholars to discuss the premises, possibili-
ties, limitations and (ethico-moral) objectives of discourse research car-
ried out along the lines of the Essex School’s approach. The contributions
included in this volume are presented and made accessible to an interna-
tional public for the first time. Being rooted in various scientific disci-
plines (cultural studies, economics, geography, language studies, political
science, sociology, etc.), and being active within different research fields
and areas, the authors will take their own research experience as a starting
point and discuss the following matters in their contributions:

1. how they relate themselves to, conceive of and make use of the Essex
School’s approach in their research
2. what they consider the particular strengths and weaknesses linked
with this research tradition
3. where they locate particular shortcomings, contradictions and chal-
lenges to be solved in the near future
4. what they regard as the most suitable methodical means to implement
the Essex School’s approach in empirical research
5. what kind of contribution the Essex School in general, and post-­
foundational social, political and discourse theories in more particu-
lar, can make to practices of social critique

Structure of the Book

Those of you, who have already attended workshops and conferences
focussing on discourse theory and discourse analysis may have noticed
that the concept of ‘discourse’ remains a notoriously elusive concept.
Attending a venue on discourse analysis means that one learns a lot,
though not necessarily what a discourse actually is, what it consists of and
how one can observe discourses out there in the real world. This c­ onceptual
 Introduction to the Volume 5

vagueness has many possible reasons. One such reason is that qualitative
(discourse) research is particularly interested in methodical questions,
but not so much in methodological issues. Indeed, the rift between theo-
retical debate and empirical analysis is a characteristic feature of modern
social sciences and humanities in general. Another obvious reason is the
postmodern (or rather ‘post-methodological’) turn that has eliminated
earlier academic discussion about the connection between social ontol-
ogy and research methodology. The post-methodological turn character-
istic of postmodern science in general, and actor-network theory inspired
research in particular, has made it trendy to postulate the death of meth-
odology and plead for an ‘anything goes’ kind of scientific research in
which everything is possible and allowed and nothing is wrong, inappro-
priate or invalid.
Yet another reason for the lacking conceptualization of the concept of
discourse is related with the rise of the post-disciplinary ‘field of discourse
studies’. The abovementioned ‘discursive turn’ has been paralleled with
the emergence of several internally heterogeneous and mutually overlap-
ping approaches, which include ‘critical discourse analysis’ (e.g., Wodak
and Meyer 2009), ‘pragmatic discourse analysis’ (e.g., Angermuller
2011), ‘Foucaultian discourse analysis’ (e.g., Diaz-Bone 2006, 2007,
2010), ‘sociology of knowledge approach to discourse analysis’ (Keller
2011), ‘governmentality studies’ (Bröckling et al. 2011; Nadesan 2008;
Schmidt-Wellenburg 2009), to mention but a few. There are only some
attempts at distinguishing and differentiating discourse analytical
approaches systematically and explicating their specific methodical
options and limitations (e.g., Angermuller et al. 2014; Glynos et al. 2009;
Keller 2013).
In order to develop the Essex School’s approach further, I consider it
indispensable to begin with the identification of its ‘hard core’ of ideas,
concepts and premises that constitute its ‘research program’.
Contributions included in Part I (Marttila, Thomassen, Nonhoff, Glynos
and Howarth) elaborate the ontological, theoretical and methodological
foundations of the Essex School’s approach to discourse analysis. In his
contribution, Marttila follows the suit of some previous positive apprais-
als of Lakatos’s notion of ‘research program’ (e.g., Glynos and Howarth
2007, 2008, also in this volume; Glynos et al. 2009; Howarth 2005,
6 T. Marttila

2006; Marttila 2015a, b) and elaborates altogether four ontological and

theoretical premises that he regards as characteristic features of the Essex
School’s approach. In accordance with Howarth (2004: 245), these
premises provide a ‘grammar of concepts’ that informs discourse analysts
about the phenomenal characteristics of discourses and logics of discur-
sive structuration of the reality and, in this capacity, these concepts pro-
vide valuable information about relevant research questions, appropriate
methodological standpoints and practically useful scientific methods
and analytical strategies. Indeed, the awareness of this research program
and its methodological limitations open up the possibility to reflect on
the relevant research objects, objectives and interests of the Essex School’s
approach to discourse analysis. For instance, in contrast to different types
of linguistic discourse analysis reducing discourse to language and lin-
guistic interactions, the Essex School’s approach offers a firmly topologi-
cal and relational reading of discourse, according to which discourse
refers to any set of significations generating social relations that entangle
linguistic and nonlinguistic elements.
Thomassen provides important insights into the general topological
organization of discourses in his contribution. Instead of elevating ‘antag-
onism’ and ‘antagonistic relations’ to necessary features of any discourse,
Thomassen pleads for a relativization of Laclau’s concept of antagonism,
elevates heterogeneity to the central category of hegemony and discourse
analysis and discusses the usefulness and implications of the concept of
heterogeneity in empirical research. In their contribution, Glynos and
Howarth carry on their previous efforts to methodologize the Essex
School’s approach to empirical discourse analysis. The authors argue that
the frequently asserted methodological deficit of the Essex School’s
approach must be solved against the background of its typical logic of
scientific reasoning. This chapter advocates a ‘retroductive reasoning’
characterized by a specific way of relating the key elements of the Essex
School’s approach to a congruent ‘post-positivist’ way of thinking about
research strategies and methodological options. Basically, the ‘retroduc-
tive logic’ presented by Glynos and Howarth underlines the necessity to
start from an explicitly reflected understanding of discourses and logics of
discursive structuration of the reality and then, against the background of
this theoretically informed pre-understanding, decide on how discourses
 Introduction to the Volume 7

can or cannot be studied. For example, this pre-understanding implicates

in the Essex School’s approach that discourse cannot be reduced to con-
ceptual contents of significations.
Nonhoff’s contribution shows that discourses in general, and hege-
monic discourses producing hegemonic ‘strategemes’ in particular, must
be conceived of and analyzed in topological terms as recurrent patterns of
signifying relations. Nonhoff’s distinction between discourse qua ‘form’
and discourse qua ‘conceptual content’ also underlines the necessity to
distinguish the Essex School from various types of phenomenological dis-
course analysis (e.g., ‘interpretative discourse analysis’, ‘cognitive dis-
course analysis’, ‘sociology of knowledge approach to discourse analysis’)
interested primarily in social subjects’ conscious self-conceptions and
interpretations (Glynos et al. 2009; Keller 2013). Nonhoff indicates that
hegemony analysis inspired by the Essex School must—akin to the
Foucaultian discourse analysis—achieve an epistemological break with
collectively shared and socially taken-for-granted bodies of knowledge
and search for their contingent origins in hegemonic ‘strategemes’. In
other words, discourse analysts must know what discourses are like, where
they are located, by whom they are articulated and how they manifest
themselves in empirical material, before they can begin with empirical
discourse analysis.
The entanglement of discourse theory and empirical discourse research
presented in Part I implicates that questions related to the practical plan-
ning and conduct of discourse analysis cannot be reduced to technical
matters. In accordance with Diaz-Bone (2007: 35), discourse analysis
needs to be conceived of and conducted in a ‘holistic manner’ as a ‘theory-­
driven construction of “phenomena”’ (own translation). This theoretical,
or rather ‘methodological’, holism has nothing to do with theoretical
determinism, because a theoretical pre-understanding of the studied
social phenomena does not determine our possible empirical observa-
tions and interpretations of these phenomena: it merely informs us about
how we should make sense of these phenomena. In accordance with its
‘heuristic’ function, discourse theory teaches us how the discursive struc-
turation of the reality ‘manifests itself and how it can or cannot be inves-
tigated’ (Diaz-Bone 2006: 5; own translation). This constructivist
methodological standpoint implicates that discourse analysts operating
8 T. Marttila

in the Essex School’s tradition do not analyze their research objects as

they appear to us beyond our research context, but rather as we conceive
of them when looking at them through the ‘Essex School lens’. Obviously
then, an essential feature of the Essex School’s approach is that it impedes
the possibility of a ‘strong separation of theoretical discourse and empiri-
cal objects’ (Howarth 2005: 329). This dissolution of the distinction
between theoretical pre-understanding and empirical discovery of the
world implicates that the usefulness of different discourse analytical
methods and strategies cannot be estimated by their correspondence to
objects’ immanent properties but that it must be assessed against the
background of our pre-understanding of these objects as objects formed
in a discourse.
Part II of this book provides empirical cases studies that show how the
research program elaborated in Part I informs about and inspires empiri-
cal discourse research. Contributions by Parasecoli and Carpentier under-
line the topological and material logic of a discursive structuration of
social reality. Both authors underline the possibility to move beyond the
realm of language and instead refer the concept of discourse to all kinds
of significations producing and reproducing signifying relations. While
Parasecoli emphasizes the methodological and methodical similarities
between social semiotics and discourse analysis inspired by the Essex
School, Carpentier advocates a productive and constructive dialogue
between discourse analysis and research carried out in the context of ‘new
materialism’. Both contributions offer innovative pathways for future dis-
course analysis by not only showing that discourse is far more than just
language but also by pointing out how discourses qua relational entangle-
ments of symbolic and material elements and practices can be studied in
empirical material. The ‘materiality’ of discourse is one of the key prem-
ises of the Essex School’s approach to discourse analysis. In particular the
notion of ‘sedimentation’, which Laclau (1990) elaborated in accordance
with Husserl’s original coinage of the term, implicates that discourses qua
significations producing and reproducing relations cannot be reduced to
social subjects’ conscious self-conceptions articulated and communicated
in written and spoken linguistic interactions. Among other things, the
‘materiality’ of discourse teaches us that discourse analysis should not
focus on the meanings that social subjects are aware of assigning
­themselves and the world surrounding them. Instead, discourse analysts
 Introduction to the Volume 9

should try to discover ways to observe and reconstruct discourses by

looking at relatively regular ‘patterns’ of relations that social subjects
actualize in both linguistic and nonlinguistic practices. Palonen’s contri-
bution also makes the case for a systematic analysis of discourses as assem-
blages of symbolic and material objects and practices. This chapter
presents a case study on the political construction of the urban symbolic
landscape of Budapest and shows how the so-called city-text constitutes
street names, statues and architecture and is entangled with and embed-
ded in hegemonic political and cultural ideologies. This chapter also
demonstrates how the social practices participating in the construction of
the ‘city-text’ and the material reality that structures them and is struc-
tured by them can be studied using the discourse analytical framework of
the Essex School. By doing so, this chapter contributes to the method-
ological development of this approach through a rhetoric performative
approach to discourse analysis.
In her analysis of the political management of the European refugee
crises, Mascha shows how ‘dislocation’—a key concept of the Essex
School’s approach—can be used as a heuristic tool that facilitates the
empirical observation of the disruption of previously hegemonic political
ideologies in general, and the European Union’s ideological and political
formation in particular. Also, Hartz displays how the theoretical concepts
and methodical instruments provided by the Essex School’s approach
(here: post-foundational discourse analysis) can be used to analyze the
‘discursive fabrication’ of political protest movements in general and the
right-wing populist Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization
of the West) movement in Germany in particular. The contributions by
Mattissek and Schopper and Nikosianis et al. also offer unprecedented
methodological ideas and methodical insights for the future operational-
ization of the Essex School’s approach. While discourse analysts affiliated
with the Essex School’s approach usually apply qualitative methods, these
contributions make the case for a methodological cross-fertilization
between interpretative methods of analysis inspired by the Essex School
and quantitative computer-assisted text analysis. These contributions do
not only underline the possibility to apply the Essex School’s approach to
media analysis, but they also show how the particular conception of a
discourse as a recurrent pattern of signifying relations opens up the
chance to locate hegemonic and counter-hegemonic media discourses.
10 T. Marttila

Part III comprises of contributions by Boucher, Hildebrand and Séville

and Åkerstrøm Andersen et al. that show how, by what right, by what
means and with what possible consequences social and political theories
associated with the Essex School’s approach can contribute to social prac-
tices of critique. While Latour (2004) has clarified that critique has ‘run
out of steam’ and Critchley (2004) argues that the Essex School’s tradi-
tion suffers from a ‘normative deficit’, contributions included in this part
provide more nuanced and reflected conceptions of the possibilities and
limitations of critique. In his contribution, Boucher lends more visibility
to some contradictions inherent in Laclau and Mouffe’s normatively
charged project to radical democracy. Boucher claims that Laclau and
Mouffe’s conflation of a normative political strategy with a descriptive
theory of ideology has led to a persistent normative deficit in their radical
democratic strategy. According to Boucher, the revival of the Althusserian
foundations of the Essex School’s approach combined with the concep-
tual retrieval of elements of the Althusserian program can increase the
inherent consistency and critical potential of Laclau and Mouffe’s radical
democratic strategy. Radical democracy is also discussed in the ensuing
chapter by Hildebrand and Séville. The authors argue that Laclau and
Mouffe’s more recent writings point out mutually distinctive routes of
post-foundationalist thought that result in two distinctive conceptions of
the critical stance located in post-foundational political and social theo-
ries. The authors conclude that even though Laclau and Mouffe’s
discourse-­theoretical premises serve as a prerequisite for democratic eth-
ics, they cannot provide us with any objective normative standard or
authority to judge social conditions and, hence, advance a particular
politico-ideological project. In the concluding chapter of this volume,
Åkerstrøm Andersen et al. take a more comprehensive look at the theoreti-
cal and philosophical strand of ‘post-foundational’ thought and discuss if
and how social and political theories affiliated with post-foundationalism
can revive the discussion of critique. The authors argue that critique pro-
duced against the background of post-foundationalism must acknowl-
edge two inherent premises: firstly, that there is no place outside society
from where it can be criticized and, secondly, that critics cannot claim
epistemological authority underlining and legitimizing their right to
judge right from wrong.
 Introduction to the Volume 11

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