Democracy and emancipation: the necessary suture according to Ernesto Laclau

Abstract

The work of Ernesto Laclau added valuable contributions to philosophical-political literature written in Spanish, inspired by classical Marxism and afflicted by reflection on the fate of contemporary democracy in the West. Furthermore, in the second phase of his work, which goes from the mid-eighties until his death in 2014, his work presents special merit as a Latin American thinker and professor at Essex for several years, because at the same time who collected the keys of the Marxist tradition, the Lacanian version of psychoanalysis and some resources of the theory of discourse in the critical perspective, developing together with Chantal Mouffe his refined theory of hegemony, he paid keen observation to the political processes of peripheral scenarios to Europe and the United States, determined to expand his analysis of the possibilities of real articulation between socialism and democracy.