Discourse Practice and Radical Politics:From Foucault to Post-Marxism

One important source of the discourse practice of Laclau and Mouffe's Post-Marxism is Foucault's discussion of both discourse and discourse practice in The Archaeology of Knowledge.On the one hand,they both have inherited Foucault's concept of discursive formations and denounced a priori unity of discourse,regarding discourse practice as a connecting practice in a discursive space of difference;on the other they both have criticized Foucault's distinction between discourse and non-discourse,regarding this distinction a distinction within discourse and viewing the whole social life as a discourse space.If Foucault has his duality concerning the relationship between discourse practice and politics,namely,discourse is both against and for power,Post-Marxism has combined discourse practice with radical plural democracy,which helps revive the European Leftists for realizing their revolutionary missions though at the price of uncertainty.