Session Information
13 SES 05 B, Translation, Articulation, and Transformation
Paper Session
Contribution
Articulation usually means either a joint or juncture between bones, or the act of uttering a linguistic expression, putting something into words to make it intelligible. In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe join the concept's two semantic fields together, and add a third, political one: in their theory of radical and pluralist democracy articulation means "any practice establishing a relation among elements such that their identity is modified as a result of the articulatory practice" (105). Through this concept Laclau and Mouffe attempt to liberate Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony from Marxist economism, adjusting it to a political sphere inhabited by a plurality of struggles and agents none of which has predominance over the others. However, while for Gramsci the political process of creating hegemony had an explicit educational dimension, Laclau and Mouffe ignore this dimension altogether, so to speak fail to articulate it. In this paper I uncover the educational aspects inherent in Laclau and Mouffe's concept of articulation, and argue that this concept can contribute to democratic educational theory. Specifically, radical democratic politics necessarily involves pedagogic activity, and the practice of articulation is an essential key to introducing radical democracy into schools.
The centrality of education in Gramsci's thought stems from his understanding of the importance of collective consciousness and popular consent in politics. A political movement can succeed and become hegemonic, according to Gramsci, only if it is perceived as legitimate by the vast majority of the people. Unlike Marx, who assumed the proletariat is a unified political subject that will achieve class consciousness merely through living in capitalist society, Gramsci argues that the formation of hegemonic "common sense" is the result of a lengthy "war of position", namely of extensive work of learning and thinking, aimed at developing a critical approach towards socio-economic reality. This is an educational process, in which "organic intellectuals" play the role of teachers: they encourage the workers to reflect on the critical, "good-sensical" elements of their consciousness and turn it into a hegemonic common sense.
Laclau and Mouffe introduce the concept of articulation into Gramsci's theory of hegemony to emphasize that intellectuals are not necessarily representatives of the communist party, and critical consciousness is not only proletarian. This concept denotes an active, transformative co-operation between political subjects, a relation in which no party is more "right" or "universal" than the other; no one speaks the ultimate language in which social criticism and political demands can be formulated. Articulation is an encounter in which every element – e.g. the farmer, the factory worker, the feminist or the environmentalist – learns to speak and express itself differently, be accessible to and understood by the others, without there being a meta-language subsuming all the others. Although Laclau and Mouffe do not mention it, this is clearly an educational process: it involves learning, growing to understand the other, and the transformation of the (individual or collective) identity into a wider, more inclusive one. Furthermore, I believe the concept of articulation also provides the guidelines for a radical pluralist democracy taking place in school. A pedagogy of articulation invites students of various identities to speak, learn, and evolve together, without assuming the existence of an ultimate identity for all or a language all have to use exactly the same. It is a pedagogy with no sharp distinction between teachers and students: it acknowledges that everyone's life experiences provide them with the knowledge and critical insight needed to be both students and teachers of all the others.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Allman, P. (1988). “Gramsci, Freire and Illich: Their Contributions to Education for Socialism” in Tom Lovett, (ed.) Radical Approaches to Adult Education: A Reader. London: Routledge. Borg, C, Buttigieg, J. A and Mayo, P. (Eds.) (2003). Gramsci and Education. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Entwistle, H. (1979). Antonio Gramsci: Conservative schooling for radical politics. London: Routledge. Francese J. (ed.) (2009). Perspectives on Gramsci: Politics, Culture and Social Theory. New York: Routledge. Gramsci, A. (2000). The Antonio Gramsci Reader, D. Forgacs (ed.). New York: NYU Press. Leggett, W. (2013). "Restoring Society to Post-Structuralist Politics: Mouffe, Gramsci and Radical Democracy," Philosophy and Social Criticism 39, no. 3, pp. 299-315. Laclau, E. (1996). Emancipation(s). London: Verso. Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (2001). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards A Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso. Peter Mayo, Gramsci, Freire and Adult Education: Possibilities for Transformative Action (London: Zed Books, 1999) Peter Mayo (ed.) (2010). Gramsci and Educational Thought. London: Wiley-Blackwell. Mouffe, C. (1979). "Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci", in Gramsci and Marxist Theory. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ---- (1993). "Radical Democracy: Modern or Postmodern", in The Return of the Political. London: Verso. ---- (2005). The Democratic Paradox. London: Verso. Smith, A. M. (1998). Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary. London: Routledge. Snir, I. (2015). "Experts of Common Sense: Philosophers, Laypeople and Democratic Politics," Humana.Mente Journal of Philosophical Studies vol. 28, pp. 187-210. ---- (2016). "'Not Just One Common Sense': Gramsci's Common Sense and Laclau and Mouffe's Radical Democratic Politics," forthcoming in Constellations.
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