Introduction

Abstract

With this book I hope to fill the theoretical gap between, on the one hand, the rapidly expanding research programme of discourse analysis, which until now has been preoccupied with analysing the contingent construction of political subjectivity, and on the other hand, the traditional Marxist focus on the stable reproduction of institutional forms of state, economy and civil society. I am by no means suggesting that the latter possess a given essence, the reproduction of which discourse analysis has as yet failed to account for. Rather, by invoking a Lacanian propensity, I shall claim that ‘l’Etat n’existe pas’, ‘l’économie n’existe pas’ and ‘la société civile n’existe pas’. The state, the economy and civil society neither exist as unified social essences, nor do they provide the real structures of social life. However, this assertion does not free us from the task of analysing the discursive construction of the state, the economy and civil society conceived as non-unified formations of signifying sequences which are recursively validated by various kinds of social and political agents. In an attempt to draw out the full implications of this insight, the present work seeks to direct discourse analysis to the study of the conflictual formation and uneven articulation of the intrasocietal spheres of state, economy and civil society within the advanced capitalist countries.