Hegemony: A Useful Concept in Times of Crisis

Abstract

Abstract:The idea of hegemony, in its Gramscian sense, contributed to the renewal of several fields of social sciences in the 1970s and 1980s. This idea circulates between different geocultural spaces and different times. The approach adopted in this article starts from the contexts in which this idea is mobilized in order to show to which theoretical and practical stakes it answers. Focusing on four authors (Antonio Gramsci, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Pablo Iglesias) and on the transfers from one author to another, the aim of this paper is to highlight the social conditions conducive to the deployment of the idea of Gramscian hegemony and to identify the (dis)continuities that punctuate its history. Throughout the socio-historical course marked out by the written productions of these four authors, one constant appears: the vitality of the concept of hegemony seems linked to periods of crisis— theoretical and / or strategic—of the Left.