Identity 74

Within discourse theory identities are understood as relational. The construction of categories involves their insertion into a discursive system of similarities and differences. In fact, the identity of the Self originates from its position in relation to the Other and its characteristics as represented through a signifying system. The Self has multiple positions and roles depending on the social context it relates to. For example, the Self can be described as democratic and catholic. These multiple Selves are possible               

195 _{Babbie, The Practice of Social Research, USA: Cengage Learning, 2013, pp. 32-33} 196 _{Ruiz Ruiz, Qualitative Social Research}

because each social context in which the Self interacts puts forward a meaningful description of the Self that can be added to other existing descriptions.197

Although the Self can acquire multiple identities, there is always a distance between the acquired identity and its subject. Similarly to discourse, this distance generates the impossibility of constituting a complete identity. It follows that the subject does not completely fit within the space of its identity because instability and change are constitutive elements of any identity.198 Having said this, it is important to understand the process through which an identity is ‘acquired’, and how it can change. Derrida holds that identity is always unstable and contingent. The acquisition of identity implies a process of self-understanding and identification. Identification, in turn, involves a process of exchange between an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside’ and this locates identities within a certain context.199 However, this does not create a full and fixed identity. The identity of the subject can change through a new act of identification (e.g. dislocation, see below) and through its adherence to a new project (e.g. Russia’s identification moved from its self-identification with Yeltsin’s project to a self-identification with Putin’s project). The scope of the change depends on the relative success of that project in becoming hegemonic. The more limited the space available for identification outside the hegemonic discourse is, the smaller the possibility there is for a change. As such, the examination of the way in which the limits of discourse are historically constructed makes it possible to observe how subjectivity itself is constructed. Consequently, it is relevant to consider how the Self is constructed within a discourse, how it acquires and establishes its position and how it relates to and differentiates from ‘otherness’. Besides claiming the relational foundation of identity, Laclau and Mouffe also assert that identity is constructed through unstable differences. The constant comparison with the Other implies that the construction of the Self passes through a confrontation with a system of difference that can never be eradicated.200 The Self’s confrontation with the system of difference embodied by the Other results in a political contestation of discourses. This political contestation between the Self and the Other is ultimately a               

197 _{For example the Self can be described at the same time as student, man, Russian.}

198 _{E. Laclau, and L., Zac, Minding the Gap: The Subject of Politics, in Laclau, E., eds., The Making of} Political Identities, London: Verso, 1994, p.35 

199 _{S., Newman, Derrida’s Deconstruction of Authority, Philosophy & Social Criticism, Vol.27, No.3,}

2001. Available from: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/saul-newman-derrida-s-deconstruction-of- authority Accessed 10/10/2013 

200 _{R., Friedland, J., Mohr, Matters of Culture: Cultural Sociology in Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge}

contestation for power and hegemony and stems from the awareness that the Self and its discourses are vulnerable and incomplete. It is around these processes that, drawing from a Gramscian position, Laclau and Mouffe affirm the centrality of political contestation between identities.201

Laclau and Mouffe complement the theory of discourse by introducing three further notions: dislocation, hegemony and antagonism.202

As noted, the processes of subject positioning and identification within a discursive structure are not fixed and ‘any concrete individual’ can acquire multiple subject positions.203 From this perspective, the concepts of identification and positioning involve the possibility of dislocation, which refers to the process by which the subject adheres to another political project. In fact, as a reaction to the unstable nature of the social and political world, an identity can dislocate itself. The subject is forced to take decisions – that is to identify with other political projects and discourses – each time that a social identity is in crisis and a new structure needs to be generated. It is in the process of identification that, for Laclau and Mouffe, political subjectivities are formed or reshaped. Dislocation, hence, means that the subject is not determined by an a priori structure.204

Overall, the fact that the unity of identity and its discourses are incomplete is due to the presence of a counter-identity and counter-discourse that poses a continued ‘threat’. This circumstance opens the ground for a hegemonic contestation about how to overcome the continued dislocation of self-identity and its discourse. The presence of conflict and counter-practices marks the concept of the ‘primacy of politics’, which ultimately represents the arena where contestation for hegemony over competing discourses and identity takes place.205

Hegemony refers to the dominance of a political project in its contestation with               

201 _{Laclau, Mouffe, Hegemony and socialist strategy: Towards a radical democratic politics, p.71}  202 _{K., Dowding, eds., Encyclopedia of Power, London: SAGE Publications, 2011, pp. 194-195}  203 _{D., Howarth, and Y., Stavrakakis, Introducing Discourse Theory and Political Analysis, in D.,}

Howarth, A.J., Norval, and Y., Stavrakakis, eds., Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies and SocialChange, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000,pp.12-13

A subject might identify himself as ‘white’, ‘man’ , ‘Buddhist’. 

204 _{Dowding, Encyclopedia of Power, p. 370} 

competing discourses. The hegemony of a discourse is measured through its ability to secure meaning within a specific context. According to Sayyid and Zac, two conditions have to occur in order to consider a project as hegemonic. Firstly, when a discourse turns its political project and rules into the ‘natural’ rules of a group and its limits become the ‘natural’ limits of the group. Secondly, when it dismisses the other projects against which it was competing, although the latter do not dissolve. Yet, the hegemonic discourse has also some degree of instability. Thus, to maintain its hegemony, the dominant discourse has to establish and reiterate rules to oppose the constant challenge from competing projects attempting to destabilize the rules and limits of the hegemonic discourse.206

Overall, in a context of volatility of political borders, the hegemonic practice always faces the presence of antagonistic forces. This explains the impossibility of fixing meaning and the continued possibility of competing political projects. It follows that all the social practices that constitute new meaning and identities are conceptualized as partially internal and partially external to the discourses that define them.207

As previously stated, the conception of hegemony includes the concept of competition between discourses and, thus, social antagonism. Antagonism does not derive from a ‘real opposition’ of a priori objects, but it is a part of identity construction. Furthermore, it introduces the element of confrontation into the encounter of identities and their claims, and it confirms the relational essence of identity. Drawing from Derrida’s notion of the ‘constitutive outside’, Laclau and Mouffe contend that antagonism takes place when the presence of the Other prevents the Self from being totally it-Self causing, as a consequence, the unfeasibility of Self-formation. This impossibility derives from the mutual experience of both the antagonising entity and the entity being antagonised. The secondary effect of social antagonism is that it contributes to unifying the hegemonic discourse by establishing a threatening outside that prevents the closure of the discourse.208 As previously noted, the task of a discursive methodology is to explore the mechanism by which actors construct the blockage of identity in antagonistic terms. The concept of antagonism supports Laclau and Mouffe’s thesis that identity formation is               

206 _{Sayyid and Zac, in Scarbrough, Tanenbaum, Research strategies in the social sciences, p.262}  207 _{Laclau, and Mouffe, Hegemony and socialist strategy: Towards a radical democratic politics, pp. x-}

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not the result of an anonymous structure or the self-interested action of rational actors, but is a political and historical process subject to the negative outside that determines a constant redefinition. To explain how antagonisms are discursively constituted, it is important to stress the importance of a ‘negative outside’ and the process through which a Self’s discursive system relates to and differentiates from it.209

In general, discourse analysis has been the object of a number of critics underlining the excessive and fundamental volatility and lack of objectivity of this approach. Thus, the next section aims to explore the main limits of discourse analysis and proposes solutions to close the gaps identified.