The hegemony of hegemony

A distinctive characteristic of Laclau and Mouffe's theory of hegemony is i ts insistence on tile denial of an essence or ground of the subject. This e lement of their theory is derived from their notion of antagonism, in which a relation with a ground is brought into question by revealing its conting ency. This article argues that the political dimension of this argument mak es sense only in the context of Laclau and Mouffe's notion of modernity. Ho wever, the universalizing of modernity as the form of hegemony reduces the ontological notion of antagonism to a dialectical or empirical notion of co ntradiction. This article examines two key moves : In this process: first, the reduction of the subject to Lacan's account of the subject; and second, the reduction of modern;tv to an ontotheological political structure deriv ed from Lefort as the support of the hegemonic subject. From this the artic le examines Laclau's response to the exhaustion of political modernity in t he figure of complexity, from which antagonism is evacuated through the heg emon of the category of myth. Finally the article discusses a non hegemonic approach to antagonism derived from the work of Foucault, Wolin and Rancie re.