Post-Marxist Philosophy of Language: In Search of Symbolic Basis of Power and Emancipation

Abstract

Post-Marxism allows usto take a critical look at both the history ofWestern Marxism and the politically victorious liberalism. One of the theoretical sources for this critique is the legacy of the linguistic turn. However, the post-Marxist philosophy of language has never been conceptualized, which makesitsinterpretation a problematic field. The purpose of this research is to explicate the main provisions of the post-Marxist philosophy of language and to determine the relationship between it and political philosophy. The article deals with the approaches to language and communication in three post-Marxist theories: the discourse analysis of E. Laclau, Ch. Mouffe and S. Žižek, who was previously close to them; the politics of the event of A. Badiou and J. Rancière; and the post-Operaism of A. Negri, M. Hardt and P. Virno. In the process of the research, it is proved that postMarxism considers politics as a linguistic situation in which power and the subject arise as a result of signification. It is concluded that the common place of this philosophy of language is the assertion of its ambivalent nature: both power and emancipation have symbolic foundations and depend on interpretation and articulation. This allows usto trace the connection between the philosophy of language and the basic concepts used by postMarxists. The theoretical project of post-Marxism is defined as a rethinking of Marxism and political philosophy in general with the help of the tools of the philosophy of language. In addition, there is a difference between post-Marxist and postmodern approaches to language games and their implications for politics.

Keywords

• post-marxism
• language
• communication
• hegemony
• event
• disagreement
• postfordism