The Political Practice and its Subjects in of New Critical Theories: Complicities and Points of Adversity

Abstract

These four theoretical bets on the “multitude” (Hardt and Negri), on the political subject as fidelity to an event (Badiou), on the “people” as a hegemonic interaction of heterogeneous demands (Laclau and Mouffe), on the political subject as an emergent subject of an egalitarian irruption (Rancière), illustrate the seek for new political subjectivities after abandoning the Marxist thesis that gives a decisive role to the working-class in the process of social transformation. Apart from this binding nucleus, they present divergences that place the question about the subject of emancipation in a field of confrontations, and bifurcation points. This work aims at delimiting the lines of combat, voices of consent and dissent found in these new critical theories regarding the connection between political subjectivity, and economic relations, the issue of the strategy, the nationalism/internationalism dilemma and the disjunction between statism and anti-statism.