Neoliberal Logics and Field Theory

Abstract

Chapter 2 introduced our principal discourse theoretical categories and related them to a discussion of two distinct types of neoliberal formation. We now need to clarify the general implications for the rest of the book. Integral to all the discourse theory concepts we have considered so far has been the concept of logics (in the plural). When Laclau (2004) speaks of a hegemonic, discursive, antagonistic or heterogeneous logic, he is “not referring in the least to formal logic in the usual sense” (p. 305). Rather, like Lacan, Deleuze and others, he subsumes the three branches of the medieval university curriculum — grammar, rhetoric and logic — under the category of logic. Laclau emphasizes the “context-dependent” nature of logics, dismissing “the very idea of a general logic” (p. 305): the image of structures and systems with absolute logical foundations. “A logic is nothing else than a rarefied system of objects governed by a cluster of rules which makes some combinations and substitutions possible, and excludes others” (p. 305).