Articulation Theory: A Discursive Groundingfor Rhetorical Practice
Kevin DeLuca
The theory of articulation has become important to some of the more excit-ing developments and debates in communication studies. In LawrenceGrossberg's recent manifesto for cultural studies, "Cultural Studies and/inNew Worlds" (1993), he argues that "cultural studies has moved from apractice of critical interpretation to one of articulation" (4) and that thecritical project "needs to move beyond models of oppression . . . and to-ward a model of articulation" (8). In rhetorical theory, Ernesto Laclau andChantal Mouffe's conceptualization of articulation, hegemony, and dis-course undergird Raymie McKerrow's critical rhetoric project (1989, 94-96, 98, 103, 106). In a world without foundations, without a transcendentalsignified, without given meanings, the concept of articulation is a meansto understanding the struggle to fix meaning and define reality temporarily.To say that we live in a world without eternal truths or given meanings isnot to say that any and all possible articulations are equally likely. Theproliferation of new social movements and their struggles to rearticulate"nature," "'black," "woman," '"progress," in other words, to rearticulate thecontext of modem industrial society, testifies to the opening of reality as asite of struggle. The setback these movements have suffered is evidencethat a postmodern world guarantees neither equality of opportunity norsuccess. Laclau and Mouffe's theorization of articulation in Hegemony andSocialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (1985) suggestsa rhetoricized ontology for a postmodern world and shows how such anorientation can be used to understand contemporary politics, particularlythe new social movements.
Importing Marxist and cultural studies' terms and concepts into rhetori-cal studies has sometimes been jarring, since those endeavors tend not tohave discursive understandings of reality, meaning, power, and politics. Inpart, articulation theory resonates in rhetorical circles because of a shared
perspective on the role of discourse in the constitution of the social world,a shared investment in the "linguistic turn" (Rorty 1979). Although there isgrowing recognition among communication scholars of the centrality ofarticulation theory in the present historical juncture (e.g.. Hall 1986, Makus1990, Grossberg 1993, McKerrow 1989, Ono and Sloop 1992, Condit 1994,and Cloud 1994), unfortunately, this recognition has been accompanied byrather sketchy summaries of that work. With this essay, I propose a detourthrough the theory of articulation followed by an exploration of its impor-tance for rhetoric. In particular, I discuss the promise of the tum to theterms discourse and antagonism and suggest that articulation theory pro-vides contingent grounds for a fundamentally rhetorical understanding ofthe postmodern world,'
The theory of articulation
In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Laclau and Mouffe move the concep-tion of articulation from being a way of explaining contingency in theMarxist theory of historical necessity to a way of understanding socialstruggle in a postmodern world—that is, a world without guarantees andfoundational truths. They "begin by renouncing the conception of 'society'as founding totality" (1985, 95), They argue, instead, for the openness ofthe social and the impossibility of fixing ultimate meanings. Discursivestructures constitute and organize social relations and are the result of anarticulatory practice (96). Articulation is "any practice establishing a rela-tion among elements such that their identity is modified, . , , The practiceof articulation, therefore, consists in the construction of nodal points whichpartially fix meaning and the partial character of this fixation proceedsfrom the openness of the social, a result, in its turn, of the constant over-flowing of every discourse by the infinitude of the field of discursivity"(105, 113), Articulation^ has two aspects: speaking forth elements and link-ing elements. Though elements preexist articulation as floating signifiers,the act of linking in a particular discourse modifies their character suchthat they can be understood as being spoken anew. The linking of elementsinto a temporary unity is not necessary, but rather is contingent and par-ticular and is the result of a political and historical struggle. In short, anelement is not a fixed identity and does not have an essential meaning.
Articulating elements into a discourse can be understood as both at-tempts to fix meaning within the field of discursivity and attempts to fix
336 KEVIN DELUCA
the context, "an attempt to dominate the field of discursivity, to arrest theflow of differences, to construct a centre" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, 112).In other words, articulatory practices can range from the local to the glo-bal. For example, on a local level, Stuart Hall writes of the rearticulationof "black" in Jamaica, from its signifying dispossessed, uncivilized, andincompetent to its signifying soul brother, beautiful, solidarity with strugglesfor liberation, and the cultural essence of "Jamaican-ness" (1985). On aglobal level, the discourse of Industrialism (humanity, by dominating na-ture through the use of instrumental reason and technology, will achieveprogress) could be considered a discourse that temporarily defines the fieldof discursivity. Marxism and capitalism are two competing discourses. Theyare fighting over who should own the factory. Neither questions whetherthe factory should be built in the first place (nor whether nature should beconceived as a storehouse of resources). In a fundamental sense, they bothoperate within the taken-for-granted context of Industrialism.
Antagonisms
Antagonisms make possible the investigation, disarticulation, andrearticulation of a hegemonic discourse. Antagonisms point to the limit ofa discourse. An antagonism occurs at the point of the relation of the dis-course to the surrounding life world and shows the impossibility of thediscourse constituting a permanently closed or sutured totality. It showsthe linkage of elements to be contingent, not necessary: "Antagonism asthe negation of a given order is, quite simply, the limit of that order" (Laclauand Mouffe 1985,126). For example, during the history of the United States,the "American Dream" has faced antagonisms (slavery, segregation, op-pression of women, exploitation of workers) that have exposed the limitsof the "American Dream" and led to struggles (the Civil War, the civilrights movement, the women's suffrage movement, the women's liberationmovement, the labor movement) that disarticulated and rearticulated the"American Dream." Today, antagonisms such as global warming, ozonedepletion, toxic waste, and ptesticides in food and water provide the oppor-tunity to question and disarticulate Industrialism.
It is important to understand that there are not original or essential an-tagonisms, but that antagonisms emerge as limits from within the social.As Laclau and Mouffe explain, "The limit of the social must be given withinthe social itself as something subverting it, destroying its ambition to con-stitute a full presence. Society never manages fully to be society, because
ARTICULATION THEORY 337
everything in it is penetrated by its limits, which prevent it from constitut-ing itself as an objective reality" (1985, 127),
Laclau and Mouffe take feminism as an example. Pointing to the bio-logical difference between women and men as an original or foundationalantagonism makes the problem of sexism unanswerable. Rearticulationbecomes impossible. Linkage with other social struggles is not possible. Iffeminism saw men as the problem and the civil rights movement saw whitepeople as the problem, there would be no common ground that would en-able the two struggles to unite and understand how their particular oppres-sions expose a common relation of dominance within the hegemonic dis-course under which they are both oppressed. Antagonisms are specific, notfoundational. They are the recognition of differences as socially con-structed—as the result of the practice of articulation. Indeed, a founda-tional antagonism is not an antagonism as such, but just a difference. It hasalways been that way and the situation will remain the same after the per-ception of difference. The difference of sex or skin color cannot be changed.The antagonism due to relations of domination constructed around sex orskin color is the arena for struggle: "The political space of the feministstruggle is constituted within the ensemble of practices and discourses whichcreate the different forms of the subordination of women; the space of theanti-racist struggle, within the overdetermined ensemble of practices con-stituting racial discrimination" (132). In summary, antagonisms are differ-ences, limits, in a hegemonic discourse that must be articulated as antago-nisms by groups in order to subvert or disarticulate the hegemonic dis-course. Antagonisms are "natural" relations of subordination articulated associally constructed relations of oppression and domination.
There is a slippage in Laclau and Mouffe's usage, such that the linkageof various antagonisms in a chain of equivalencies is also called an antago-nism. For a black person in the 1950s, not being allowed to work, live,travel, ride, or eat in the same places as whites came to be seen as equiva-lent signs of general oppression, thus sparking the civil rights movement.The threat of global wanning, toxic waste, pesticides in one's food, and thespecter of a nuclear holocaust may be seen as relatively equivalent—a chainof equivalencies—insofar as they point to the hegemonic discourse of In-dustrialism and spark a struggle to disarticulate its linkages.
On another level, the antagonisms of various social struggles retain theirparticularity, but are also linked as equivalent in that they all point to thelimit of the dominant hegemonic discourse. For example, the different an-tagonisms that give rise to workers' struggles, feminist struggles, andantiracist struggles all make possible the disarticulation of the hegemonic
338 KEVIN DELUCA
discourse that constructs these vjirious groups in relations of oppression.For Laclau and Mouffe, the task of the new social movements involves"expanding the chains of equivalents between the different struggles againstoppression" (176).
Discourse, ideology, and rhetoric
Laclau and Mouffe displace the term ideology with discourse, an actionthat has important implications for rhetoric. Ideology carries certain bur-dens, as Foucault reminds us (1980, 118, 58). First, the term ideology, dueto complex historical and theoretical reasons, tends to invoke Truth as itsopposite. For equally complex historical and theoretical reasons. Truth rarelyhas been a friend to rhetoric. Second, ideology calls forth the classical hu-manist conception of a unified, essential subject, a figure justifiably viewedwith some suspicion in rhetorical circles today. Finally, ideology is oftenunderstood as mere epiphenomena of the infrastructure, a perspective thatreifies the nonsensical materialism-idealism dichotomy, which is a dividethat both rivets and rives rhetorical theorists.
Laclau and Mouffe's deployment of discourse addresses the first prob-lem largely by virtue of not being the term ideology. Within a regime ofTruth, ideology is too often construed as false consciousness and rhetoricis reduced to revealing or simply transmitting Truth—an instrumentalistnotion of rhetoric. A discursive perspective suggests that the meaning ofthe world is not discovered, but constructed, through rhetorical practices.
With respect to the second jwint, the tum to discourse highlights thecritique of the essentialist subject as "an originative and founding totality"and instead offers "'subject positions' within a discursive structure" (Laclauand Mouffe 1985, 115). A subject, however, is not simply interpellated byone discourse; rather, a subject is constituted as the nodal point of a con-glomeration of conflicting discourses, a position that leaves room for agency,but not the free will of a preconstituted subject. As Mouffe expounds.
We can thus conceive the social agent as constituted by an ensetnble of 'sub-ject positions' that can never be totally fixed in a closed system of differ-ences, constructed by a diversity of discourses among which there is no nec-essary relation, but rather a constant movement of overdetermination anddisplacement. The 'identity' of such a multiple and contradictory subject istherefore always contingent and precarious, temporarily fixed at the inter-section of those subject positions. (1993, 77)
ARTICULATION 'THEORY 3 3 9
Far from being the fully conscious source and sovereign of discourse,then, the subject is the ongoing effect of social discourses, a product con-stituted within the matrix of linguistic and material social practices. In thissense, the subject is not a content, but a performance, a happening bom,existing, and transformed in social discourses. The practices of radical en-vironmental groups offer a glimpse of what such a subjectivity looks likein practice. Environmental justice groups construct selves and identitiesthrough the f)erformance of rhetorical/social practices situated in place.
This process is clear in the transformation of Lois Gibbs from house-wife to environmentalist and founder, first, of the Love Canal HomeownersAssociation and, later, of the Citizens' Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes.Gibbs is an "ordinary woman who, in response to crisis and challenge,transcended herself and became far more than she had been" (Levine 1982,xiv), Gibbs herself describes the process:
If I imagined a year earlier that 1 would be chasing Congressman LaFalcewith signs, well. 1 wouldn't have, that's all, I am not a sign carrier. Radicalsand students carry signs, but not average housewives. Housewives have tocare for their children and their homes. But here I was giving press inter-views, doing radio programs, and chasing a congressman, a governor, andthe President with signs saying 1 supported him or that he was doing some-thing wrong. Here I was literally screaming at the New York health depart-ment or the department of transportation. (1982, 91-92)
In this transformation, Gibbs is the embodiment and enactor of multiplediscourses. While it is obvious that the discourses of environmentalism andactivism enable Gibbs to perform the role of environmental activist, Gibbs'simmersion in the discourses of mother and property owner (housewife) arealso crucial to her constitution as an environmental activist. It is her re-sponsibility and right within these discourses to care for her children andher home that prompt her to enact the discourse of environmental activism.Indeed, Temma Kaplan (1997) suggests that the preponderance of womenin the international environmental justice movement is due to their positionas mothers and the rights and responsibilities that that position entails.
The construction of Gibbs's identity through rhetorical/social practicesis analogous to the construction of the identity of the Love Canal environ-mental justice group from "blue-collar, middle-class Americans" to activ-ists for environmental justice (Gibbs 1982, 171). As Gibbs notes, the "peopleof Love Canal are quite different now than they were two or three yearsago . . . . [They] have changed their values, their lifestyles, and their priori-ties" (170-71).
340 KEVIN DELUCA
This construction of subjectivity has enormous implications for rheto-ric, which too often has accepted the conscious intentions of strategizingindividuals as sufficient explanation. It is not accidental, for instance, thatthe rhetorical canon is littered with speeches by the likes of Abraham Lin-coln and Edmund Burke. As Barbara Biesecker notes, the subject in rheto-ric "is conceived as a consciousness, an T which thinks, jjerceives andfeels, an T whose self-presence or consciousness to itself is the source ofmeaning" (1989, 123),
Some may argue that, because it shifts focus to the text, the rhetoricalcriticism of those who perform close textual analysis escapes the inten-tional fallacy. Although the hermeneutic character of such analysis openspossibilities for contextualization, I think intentionality still too often gov-ems the scene of criticism, that close readings are often infused with ahumanist ideology that both motivates and limits the textual analyses. Es-says by Dilip P. Gaonkar (1993) and James Jasinski (1997) suggest thatsuch a limitation is typical of this method of rhetorical criticism. By inter-rogating the emerging area of the rhetoric of science as exemplary of con-temporary rhetorical studies, Gaonkar describes a practice committed "toan agent-centered model of intentional persuasion" that "invariably readsthe text as a manifestation of the author's conscious design" (1993, 277).Focusing on Campbell's early essays on Darwin's The Origin of the Spe-cies, Gaonkar concludes. "Campbell's analysis assumes that Darwin knewexactly what he was doing and that his textual practices were intentionaland premeditated" (280). Jasinski comes to similar conclusions about theprevalent practice of close rhetorical readings. He discems the search forpurpose (intention) as the governing principle of rhetorical criticism,Jasinski's review of essays by Black, Leff and Mohrmann, and Lucas leadshim to summarize the assumptions of the instrumental tradition (which in-cludes close textual analysis) as follows: "a mode of contextualization thatassumes situational stability, a sense of agency that assumes that inten-tions are unambiguous, fully present, and capable of directing textual pro-duction, and a sense of the text that assumes its coherence and its ability torepresent authorial intention fully and without significant distortion" (1997,210). Such assumptions not only lead to a certain blindness in rhetoricalcriticism, but also close off possibilities for the criticism of the rhetoric ofa mass-mediated public sphere.
To be clear, the decentering of the subject and intentionality that Laclauand Mouffe suggest is not the dismissal of these concepts. Agency andintentionality still must be accounted for, but in a manner that recognizeshow they are forged in the complex conflux of commercial, legal, prop-
ARTICULATION THEORY 341
erty, philosophy, and literary discourses. Even if one wants to argue thatthe Cartesian "I" or Lockean individual and his/her intentionality are fic-tions, they have been (and still are) fictions with rhetorical force and effec-tivity. The fictions of the individual, the autonomous author, originality,and genius are legal realities institutionalized in the copyright (Rose 1993).
Let us return to the example of Lois Gibbs to explore a rhetorical criti-cism bumped off the moorings of humanism by Laclau and Mouffe's ac-count of subjectivity. Traditionally, a critic would read the texts of Gibbsin conjunction with her intentions and experiences as a sovereign subject.The question is: How did Gibbs's experience as a mother lead her to intendto achieve certain ends and how is this manifested in her rhetoric? Laclauand Mouffe's turn to "subject positions" suggests not that we focus on thesubject as a source of texts (and their meanings), but. instead, that we readGibbs as constituted and empowered through a conflux of diverse dis-courses. The focus is not on the intentions of a fully conscious andstrategizing subject, but on the discourses that make possible a particularform of agency. Instead of reading Gibbs's rhetoric in light of her inten-tions, the critic would read her rhetoric in conjunction with larger socialdiscourses. The question becomes: How do the discourses of motherhood,projjerty rights, environmentalism. and activism constitute the subjectivityand contex< that enable Gibbs to contest rhetorically the waste disposalpractices of corporations?
Laclau and Mouffe's adoption ofdiscour.se addresses the third problemwith the term ideology—that it is a mere epiphenomenon of material real-ity. Excluding the charges of heresy leveled by orthodox Marxists (Geras1987), the major criticism of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy is that the"book thinks that the world, social practice, is language" (Hall 1986. 57).The accusation that Laclau and Mouffe retreat into language and leave the"real" world behind is based on an erroneous equation of discourse withlanguage. Laclau and Mouffe, following Wittgenstein, explicitly state thatdiscourse is material and includes within itself the linguistic and thenonlinguistic (1985, 107-12). They use the term discourse to emphasize"that every social configuration is meaningful. . . . [I]n our interchangewith the world, objects are never given to us as mere existential entities;they are always given to us within discursive articulations.... [OJutside ofany discursive context objects do not have being; they have only exist-ence" {Laclau 1990, 100, 103-4). Of course a tree exists, but a tree is notjust a tree. It is firewood, a god, shelter, a source of food, or artistic inspi-ration dq>ending on the discursive context. To use an example from envi-ronmental politics, yes, toxic waste sites exist. Their existence is not in
342 KEVIN DELUCA
question, but what they mean is the site for political struggle. Within thehegemonic discourse of Industrialism, toxic waste sites are the normalizedcost of economic growth and the people affected need to sacrifice for thecommon good. Environmental justice groups are struggling to articulatean alternative discourse of environmental justice that contests this mean-ing of toxic waste sites and rearticulates them as examples of class dis-crimination, institutional racism, and corporate colonialism that exp>ose thelimits of and challenge Industrialism, thus expanding the spaces for politi-cal struggle and resistance.
In echoing the criticism that Laclau and Mouffe and others "collapsethe distinction between discourse and the real" (Cloud 1994. 154; see also142, 145, and 153), rhetorician Dana Cloud states, "if a bomb falls on ci-vilians in Baghdad, and a critic is not present to see it, the bomb still did. inreality, fall" (148). Laclau and Mouffe would not contest that bombs fellon civilians in Baghdad. Yet they would recognize that merely announcingthe existence of this event is not enough to carry the day politically anddoes not constitute critical intervention. Instead, they would argue that themeaning of that event (accident; disaster caused by Saddam Hussein's useof civilians as shields for military sites; evidence of the horrific costs of aninhumane, imperialist slaughter) is the arena for struggle and that the bomb-ing of civilians is an antagonism that opens the possibility of deconstructingthe government's articulation of the Persian Gulf War as a bloodless high-tech operation of liberation against the demon Saddam Hussein.
Laclau and Mouffe's defmition of discourse, with its distinction betweenbeing or meaning and existence, is useful, particularly because it lets themget beyond the essentialist dichotomy of idealism and materialism. Thisnonproductive dichotomy is itself a discursive construction, a vestige of asimplified Cartesianism in which the idea of a purely material world strippedof all its discursive aspects is constructed and posited as separate from anequally constructed and pure mental world. Overall, the discursive tumexpands the possibilities and imfKjrtance of rhetoric. Within a discursiveframe, rhetoric is no longer an instrument in the service of reality, but,rather, becomes constitutive of the meaning of the world.
In articulation theory, the term antagonism functions in place of contra-diction in classical Marxism. This is important from a rhetorical perspec-tive. The term contradiction implies a clash between the essential interestsof two ontologically fundamental classes. The role of the politically activerhetorical critic, from this perspective, is to expose such contradictions inthe hopes that awareness will spark social action. Yet the contemporarysocial field is rife with exposed contradictions, demonstrating that expo-
ARTICULATION THEORY 343
sure in and of itself does not lead to social change. Laclau and Mouffe'suse of the term antagonism highlights the point that differences (contra-dictions) must be constructed as antagonisms through rhetorical practices.Further, these practices are performed, not by classes privileged by theirplace in the mode of production, but by social formations that are them-selves the results of rhetorical practices. Let us return to the case of toxicwaste dumps. Within the hegemonic discourse of Industrialism, a toxic wastesite is the necessary "price of progress." Only when neighbors adjacent toa toxic waste site employ various rhetorical tactics to challenge such adesignation is the site an antagonism that makes evident the limits of In-dustrialism and offers possibilities for change. And in practicing rhetoric,the neighbors (housewives, lawyers, blue-collar workers, sales clerks, teach-ers, and so on) constitute themselves both as victims of environmentalcrimes and as activists for environmental justice.
Rhetoric, phronesis, and postmodern politics
In Laclau and Mouffe's later work, their rapprochement with rhetoric be-comes explicit in their tum to phronesis. In a series of essays and inter-views since Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, they individually work toexplicate and expand their theory of articulation, antagonism, hegemony,subjectivity, discourse, and radical democracy.' In support of their anti-essentialist and nonfoundational theoretical stand, both Laclau (1993a, 341)and Mouffe (1993, 14-18) turn to phronesis. They claim that political ar-gument in a social field permeated by contingency and doxa, not necessityand universal truths (i.e., society, not as ground, but as argumentative tex-ture), must be characterized by phronesis. Although a tum lo phronesis canbe construed as conservative, it is Aristotle's conservative definitions ofvirtue, right action, and tradition that render it so (Aristotle 1962/1981. 3 -18, 38-44, 152-73; Warnick 1989, .305-7). While there is a tradition ofexercise of power, there is also a tradition of struggle (Laclau 1993a, 341).For example, the environmental activists of Greenpeace and Earth First!are part of a tradition of radical direct action that can be traced back atleast as far as the Luddites (Thompson 1964; Sale 1995). if not to the Dig-gers (Hill 1967, 1972, 1985). The characteristics of phronesis that interestLaclau and Mouffe are its open-endedness, pragmatism, emphasis on theparticular, embeddedness in the local and historically specific, and recog-nition of contingency (Laclau 1993a, 341; Mouffe 1993, 14-18; Warnick
344 KEVIN DELUCA
1989, 306; Charland 1991, 73). This is in contrast with the instrumentalreason of science, which emphasizes the universal, abstract, and timeless.Phronesis, then, is the "intelligent understanding of contingency" (Charland1991, 72) that guides praxis in an open social Held.
This tum to phronesis answers a major criticism of postmodemism ingeneral and Laclau and Mouffe's discursive social theory in particular: thatthe tum to discourse renders impossible any coherent, progressive politics.This charge points to a pervasive fear among social theorists that the aban-donment of a logic of a priori necessity, essential identities, and founda-tions (laws of History, economic determinism, universal class, etc.) willmake politics and social critique impossible (see Habermas 1987, Harvey1989, Eagleton 1991, Hart 1994, Cloud 1994).
Laclau and Mouffe's response to this fear of a retreat from the politicalis that the abandonment of ultimate foundations and the widening of thefield of undecidability expands the field of politics (Laclau 1993b. 280)and that the subversion of structural laws by contingency creates the verypossibility of radical politics (Laclau 1990, 46). If society and history areunderstood as the necessary unfolding of Reason getting to know itself(Hegel) or the necessary development of the laws of History (Marx), poli-tics is reduced to discovering the action of a reality extemal to itself, rhetoricis reduced to transmitting that reality, and humans are reduced to specta-tors or actors in a .scripted play written by Reason or History (or someother essential ground). If, however, society is understood as groundless,politics and rhetoric become ontological as the names of that process throughwhich social agents in part construct their own world (Laclau 1993a, 341;1993b, 295). As Laclau explains.
Abandonment of the myth of foun(lation.s does not lead lo nihilism, just asuncertainty as to how an enemy will attack does not lead to passivity. Itleads, rather, to a proliferation of discursive interventions and argumentsthat are necessary, because there is no extradiscursive reality that discoursemight simply reflect. Inasmuch as argument and discourse constitute thesocial, their open-ended character becomes the source of a greater activismand a more radical libertarianism. Humankind, having always bowed to ex-ternal forces—God, Nature, the necessary laws of History—can now, at thethreshold of postmodemity, consider itself for the first time the creator andconstructor of its own history. (1993a. 341)
In short, the discursive turn expands the (possibilities and importance ofpolitics and rhetoric. Within a discursive frame, rhetoric is no longer atechne or instrument in the service of Truth (be it Platonic or Marxist);rather, it becomes constitutive of any social or political collectivity.
ARTICULATION THEORY 345
The ontological function of rhetoric is nowhere more apparent than inthe construction of the "new social movements," which in no way can beconstrued as the coming to awareness of essential identities. If early socialmovements could somehow be seen as natural, either through essential iden-tities (race or gender) or through common material interests due to sharedpositions in the mode of production (class), and this is contestable,'' con-temporary social movements are rhetorical achievements.
As a number of sociologists (A. Touraine, A. Melucci, J. L. Cohen) note,the new social movements differ from past social movements in funda-mental ways. For a variety of reasons, the new social movements do notfocus on the distribution of material goods, expansion of institutional po-litical rights, and security; rather, they thematize personal and collectiveidentity, contest social norms, challenge the logic governing the system,and, in sum, deconstruct the established naming of the world. In other words,there is a shift from economic grounds to cultural grounds or from thedomain of the state and economy to civil society, in part "because the domi-nation which is challenged controls not only 'means of production' but theproduction of symbolic goods, that is, of information and images of cul-ture itself' (Touraine 1985, 774; see also Melucci 1985, 795-96).
The postmodem critique of essentialism and foundations not only ex-pands the field of politics theoretically, but also recognizes both the failureof the essentialized identity of the working class in the wake of the dislo-cations of disorganized or late capitalism and the emergence of the newsocial movements based on the dispersion of subject positions and the pro-liferation of social struggles in the contemporary social field. The variousstruggles of environmental, feminist, antiracist, and antinuclear peacegroups share the central characteristic "that an ensemble of subject posi-tions linked through inscription in social relations, hitherto considered asapolitical, have become loci of conflict and antagonism and have led topolitical mobilization" (Mouffe 1993, 77). For such groups, identity is nota natural assumption, but a rhetorical achievement.
To the concern of D. Harvey, Frederick Jameson, and other critics thatpostmodem politics prevents the coordination of local and global struggles,thus isolating and disem|X)wering local resistances while aiding globalcorporate capitalism, Laclau and Mouffe respond that the task of the newsocial movements involves expanding the links between the differentstruggles against oppression and that articulation is this very practice. Inother words, the new social movements need to disavow an essentialistidentity politics that balkanizes and, instead, link the different antagonismsthat give rise to environmental struggles, workers' struggles, feminist
346 KEVIN DELUCA
Struggles, and antiracist struggles so as to make possible the disarticula-tion of the hegemonic discourse that constructs these various groups inrelations of oppression.
Environmental justice groups have been doing this by working to estab-lish contingent alliances directed toward political interventions in larger-than-local discourses. Their redefinitions of environment have enabled themto articulate links with groups concerned with race, class, and rural issuesand have resulted in a kaleidoscopic network of environmental justicegroups that works to protect thousands of communities across the UnitedStates from potential or existing landfills and hazardous waste sites, aswell as other problems (Szasz 1994, 72-76; Dowie 1995, 131-35).
Environmental justice groups, then, recognize their common struggleagainst the discourse of Industrialism while simultaneously engaging inlocal struggles situated in place. In this recognition, in their rhetorical prac-tices of constructing nature in ways that lead to linkages and networksamong disparate groups, environmental justice groups embody a possiblepolitics in a postmodem social field marked by fragmentation, simulation,and diversity. In short, environmental justice groups are practicing an ar-ticulatory politics that is a way of understanding how, in a postmodemworld with neither guarantees nor a great soul of revolt, diverse groupspracticing an array of rhetorical tactics can forge links that transform theirlocal stmggles into a broad-based challenge to the existing industrial sys-tem. In such a world, rhetoric becomes ontological: the mobilization ofsigns for the articulation of identities, ideologies, consciousnesses, com-munities, publics, and cultures.
Department of Speech CommunicationUniversity of Georgia
Acknowledgment1 would like to thank Ian Angus for providing me with an excellent introduction to the workof Laclau and Mouffe and Michael McGee for encouraging my continued engagement witharticulation theory. The argument presented in this essay is developed and put into practicein my forthcoming book. Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism (NewYork: Gilford Publishing, 1999).
NotesI. Postmodem is a notoriously vague and slippery term that is also unavoidable. I think
it is best to think of it as what Raymond Williams terms a structure of feeling (1977, 128-3S). To give a better sense of that feeling. I want to suggest that postmodemism can becharacterized in pait by the conjunction of the following elements: a decentering of the
ARTICULATION THEORY 347
subject as origin, end. and arbiter of theory and practice: a desubilization or fragmentationof all kinds of identity; a lack of belief in any foundation, totality, transcendental signified,or grand narrative and a recognition of a plurality of discourses; a shift from a thematicstruth to power; a generalized awareness of limits, particularly the limits of reason (Laclau1990. 3); a change in material conditions, including the disappearance of Nature as the greatreferent that ontologically grounds Western epistemology; and the rise of both image andmicropolitics.
2. In Laclau and Mouffe's works, articulation ends up meaning both the practice andtbe product. When articulation is meant in the latter sense, articulation, discourse, and for-mation function as sliding signifiers. To minimize confusion, 1 prefer to use articulation tomean the practice and discourse to mean the product.
3. These later discursive excursions and interventions are collected in three volumes.New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (1990) and Emancipationist (1996) by Laclauand The Return of the Political (1993) by Mouffe. They arepart of a series edited by Laclauand Mouffe, which is aptly titled Phronesis.
4. For example, even the Russian revolution did not correspond to the classical model.As Lenin noted. "[A]s a result of an extremely unique historical situation, absolutely dis-similar currents, absolutely heterogenous class interests, absolutely contrary political andsocial strivings . . . merged . . . in a strikingly harmonious" manner" (Hall 1985, 95) .
Works citedAristotle. 1962/198l..Vicomat/iea/i Ethics. Indianapolis: Bobbs-MerrillBiesecker. Barbara. 1989. "Rethinking the Rhetorical Situation from within the Thematic of Dif-
ference " Philosophy and Rhetoric 22: 110-30.Charland, Maurice. 1991 "Fmdmg a Horizon and Telos: The Challenge to Critical Rhetoric." Quar-
terly Journal of Speech 77: 71-74.Cloud, Dana L. 1994. "The Materiality of Discourse as Oxymoron: A Challenge to Critical Rheto-
ric." Western Journal of Communication 58: 141-63.Condit, Celeste M. 1994 "Hegemony in a Ma.ss-Mediated Society: Concordance about Reproduc-
tive Technologies." Critical Studies in Mass Communication 11: 205-30.Dowie, Mark. 1995. Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth
Century. Cambridge: MIT P.Eagleton, Terry. 1991. Ideology, an Introduction. New York: Verso.FoucaulL Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. 1972-77. New
York: Panheon Books.Gaonkar, Dilip P. 1993. "The Idea of Rhetoric in the Rhetoric of Science." Southern Communica-
tion Journal 58: 258-95.Geras, Norman. 1987. "Post-MarxismT" New Left Review 163: 40-82.Gibbs, L. 1982. Love Canal. Albany. NY: State U of New York PGrossberg. Lawrence. 1993. "Cultural Studies and/in New Worlds." Critical Studies in Mass Com-
munication 10: 1-22.Habermas, JUrgen. 1987. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Cambridge, MA: MIT P.Hall, Stuart. 1985. "Signification, Representation, Ideology: Althuser and the Post-Structuralist
Debates." Critical Studies in Mass Communication 2: 91-113.. 1986. "On Postmodemism and Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall." Journal ofCommunication Inquiry 10: 45-60.
Hart, Roderick P 1994. Seducing America. New York: Oxford UP.Harvey, D. 1989. The Condition of Postmodemity. Cambridge. MA: Basil Blackwell.Hill, Christopher. 1967. Reformation to Industrial Revolution. London: Wiedenfeld & Nicolson.
. 1972. The World Tumed Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution.New York: Viking.
348 KEVIN DELUCA
. 1985. The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill. Amherst, MA: U of Massachusetts P.Jameson, Frederick. 1991. Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham,
NC: Duke UP.Jasinski. James. 1997. "Instumentalism [sic], Cootextualism, and Interpretation in Rhetorical Criti-
cism." In Rhetorical Hermeneutics, ed. William Keith and Alan G. Gross, 25-85. Albany,NY: State U of New York P
Kaplan, Temma. 1997. Crazy for Democracy: Women in Grassroots Movements. New York:Routledge.
Laclau, Ernesto. 1990. New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. London: Verso.. 1993a. "Politics and the Limits of Modernity." In Postmodermsm: A reader, ed. T. Docherty,329^3. New York: Columbia UP.
. 1993b. "Power and Representation." In Politics. Theory, and CofUemporary Culture, ed.M. Poster, 277-%. New York: Columbia UP
. 19%. Emancipcuion(s). London: Verso.Laclau, Ernesto, and Chanul Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical
Democratic Politics. London: Verso.Levine, Murray. 1982. introduction to Love Canal. See Gibbs 1982.Makus, Anne. 1990. "Stuart Hall's Theory of Ideology: A Frame for Rhetorical Criticism." Western
Journal of Speech Communication 54: 495-514.McKerrow, Raymie E. 1989. "Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis " Communication Monographs
56:91-111.Melucci. A. 1985. "The Symbolic Challenge of Contemporary Movements." Social Research 52:
789-816.Mouffe, Chantal. 1993. The Return of the Political. London: Verso.Ono, Kent A., and John M. Sloop. 1992, Xorrunitment to Telos—A Sustained Critical Rhetoric."
Communication Monographs 59: 48-60.Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP.Rose, Mark. 1993. Authors and Owners. Boston: Harvard UP.Sale, Kirkpatrick. 1995. Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial
Revolution. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Szasz, Andrew. 1994. Ecopopulism: Toxic WcL^te and the Movement for Environmental Justice.
Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P.Thompson, E. P. 1964. The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Pantheon Books.Touraine, A. 1985. "An Introduaion to the Study of Social Movements." Social Research 52: 749-
87.Wamick, Barbara. 1989. "Judgment, Probability, and Aristotle's Rhetoric." Quarterly Journal of
Speech 15: 299-3\\.Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and Literature. Oxford, NY: Oxford UP
