That weird feeling of dislocation

Dislocation is the key to a shift in the hegemony. It brings forth the contingency of every society. When something in the social structure gets dislocated, suddenly, the field of discursivity emerges, and citizens become aware of the optionality of the current hegemony. Howarth and Stavrakakis describe dislocation as a disruption of an identity:

“This ‘decentring’ of the structure through social processes such as an extension of capitalist relations to new spheres of social life shatters already existing identities and literally induces an identity crisis for the subject.” (2000, p. 13)

Such an identity crisis could be caused by a more concrete crisis in the society such as an economic calamity, which forces people to re-evaluate their world views. Or, as de-scribed above, it could simply be triggered by a growing sense of unease caused by gradual changes in everyday life and pressures of constant competition.

Neoliberalism paired with globalisation has reshaped the idea of family, work, hobbies and consumption. In a short period of time, our lives have become increasingly con-nected through digital revolution. While our network of half-strangers expands, ties to our relatives loosen up. Because of consumerism and quickening lifestyles, we face daily an increasing amount of personal choices ranging from miniscule to life-altering.

The pressure of shaping ourselves into extraordinary brands is building up while at the same time we try to fit into the conventional framework. We want to special, but not strange. These sort of small things can eventually lead to a rupture in the hegemony.

However, a sudden quake, like a financial crisis or a war, can be even more effective in dislocating the social structures. Mass unemployment, bankruptcies, poverty, protests, violence, and death shake societies and force them to constitute new identities. As Howarth and Stavrakakis explain (2000, p. 13), dislocation does not necessarily have to be a traumatic occurrence; it can also be productive and spur subjects to act and shape their lives anew (although we can never fully be unbound by discourses, even when try-ing to change them). By disrupttry-ing the hegemonic discourse, dislocations create a lack of meaning, which must be filled by something else.

The field of discursivity is always abound with options. It can never be completely hegemonized by a single discourse, which would mean forever eliminating antagonistic counter-discourses and the possibility of a dislocation (Howarth & Stavrakakis 2000, p.

15). This is why it is helpful to divide discourses into Laclau’s categories: myths and imaginaries. Throughout this thesis I’ve used the terms hegemonic discourse and coun-ter-discourse to explain the competing nature of the field of discursivity. Myths and im-aginaries are almost the same thing and I often use the set of terms interchangeably, but their relationship differs a bit, at least in tone.

While Laclau’s version of myth bears some resemblance to the theories of Lévi-Strauss¹ and Barthes², it has to be understood in the context of the discourse theory. As Howarth and Stavrakakis explain it: “Myths construct new spaces of representation that attempt to suture the dislocated space” (2000, p. 15). Myths offer a new objectivity to replace the old one in the case of a dislocation by rearticulating dislocated elements (Laclau 1990, 61). In other words, myths are established discourses that take advantage of the ruptures in the hegemony. If a myth is successful in stabilising a society and provides convincing enough answers to people’s demands, it can, for the time being, be elevated into an imaginary – the hegemonic discourse.

For example, Laclau and Mouffe suggested (2014, p. 412) in their Hegemony and So-cialist Strategy in the mid-1980s that the reigning neoliberal imaginary should be re-placed by radical democracy, which for them meant the acknowledgement of “the plu-rality and indeterminacy of the social.” It would have also been “radically libertarian and infinitely more ambitious in its objectives than that of the classic left.” Essentially they were aiming for a left-wing libertarian utopia, which should not be confused with the aims of the U.S. Libertarian Party, which is clearly far more fiscally conservative and supportive of laissez-faire capitalism. Both forms of libertarism are extremely lib-eral in values and would give people the freedom to be whatever they want in personal life.

1 Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist.

2 Roland Barthes was a French philosopher with a significant influence on structuralism. He studied myths in modern context.

An actually occurred example is the fall of communism in Soviet states after the col-lapse of USSR. This happened in Romania, for instance. Norval explains that “the sub-version of the Marxist–Leninist conception of economic democracy by neoliberal dis-course is a case in point (2000, p. 226).” Similarly Kemalism in Turkey has been break-ing down as an imaginary since the 80s (Çelik 2000, p. 193–204). The process of disin-tegration has been accelerating under the disruptive and authoritative rule of Recep Tay-yip Erdoğan.

However, replacing an imaginary with another can take decades (or it can be done very quickly, for example, in a revolution) and there can be long periods of time when there even isn’t a clear imaginary. Instead the society is divided into factions of myths. The breakdown of neoliberalism may very well have started from the financial crisis, but since no clear competing discourse has emerged, the hegemony has not been subverted.

It may take years and another crisis or two before new myths emerge to suture the dislo-cation.

Norval describes the ebb and flow of myths and imaginaries as a “process” (2000, p.

227). According to her, it would be too simplistic to make unconditional judgments about which discourse is hegemonic at which time and place because the borderline of a myth and an imaginary is so nebulous. She even argues that it may be possible that more than one imaginary exist at the same time: “An analysis of Thatcherism [essen-tially neoliberalism] as a social imaginary will not preclude analysing welfarism as an imaginary. (2000, p. 228)”

She states that society itself is such a loose concept that it would be artificial to define its limits. She also claims that since one discursive formation can be formed of several hegemonic nodal points, there can also be several operating imaginaries in a society.

Which imaginaries a researcher ends up studying may very well be dependent on their perspective. Some imaginary may have a more dominant role in the society as far as po-litical power goes, but other imaginaries may operate in other sectors of the society.

For example, my point of view in this thesis is admittedly saturated by politics and eco-nomics. If my study would be concentrated on personal lives of people (e.g. through re-search of lifestyle magazines), neoliberalism might not have such a dominant role in this thesis. A religious perspective would be especially fascinating, considering that the

most powerful religious leader in the world, Pope Francis, is openly opposing the ne-oliberal phenomena, such as consumerism, inequality, market-determinism, and selfish-ness. That being said, I do believe that neoliberalism is the hegemonic discourse that has had the largest effects on Western societies since the 1970s. I am making my case of that in Chapter 4.

Regardless, pluralism is a natural element of democratic societies. Yet, even in democ-racies certain imaginaries tend to rule and alternative forms of thinking are marginal-ised. As Çelik puts it “democracy will ensue only when this instability and ambivalence is accepted and institutionalised, and not represented as an evil that has to be eliminated (2000, p. 203).” He is talking about an emerging democracy, Turkey, but the same could apply to well-established democracies as well.

Although true pluralism is often lacking even in democracies, I’m still inclined to agree with Norval. Several simultaneous imaginaries are possible. For example, the ideology of the welfare state is still very much alive in the Nordic countries and part of the Nor-dic identity, although neoliberalism has penetrated many layers of the society and to some extent (especially in economic questions) absorbed welfarism into neoliberal he-gemony using the logic of difference. Regardless, I would argue that neoliberalism has been and still continues to be the single most important imaginary of the last four dec-ades. Its power has been greatly expanded by the force of globalisation¹, which has ac-celerated rapidly during the same period as the neoliberalism emerged.