Hegemony

Abstract

Having delineated the crucial notions of crisis and change, reality and difference, in parts I and II of this inquiry, part III will explore the nexus of crisis and change from a genuinely discourse theoretical perspective. In doing so, I will introduce the work of the late political theorist Ernesto Laclau and his coauthored work with Chantal Mouffe. In order to do justice to their complex conceptual vocabulary, I will consecutively discuss the notions of discourse and the discursive, equivalence and difference, as well as empty and floating signifiers, before, toward the end of the chapter, summarizing a theory of crisis and change in global politics. In this context, “crisis” will be replaced by the crucial notion of “dislocation.”