Returning to the Empirical after the Discursive Turn?

Abstract

Roy ... you admit that it is existentially intransitive with respect to discourse, but then want to take it back to the level of the signifier or signified and say that this object only exists in my discursive constructions. In other words, you are contradicting yourself to say, ‘Here, that thing has a reference independently of human beings’, but at the same time you are not having a rigorous enough concept of reference, you are pulling the referent back to the level of transitive, to its constitution in discourse. (Laclau and Bhaskar 1998, 14).