Hunting the poststructuralist "snark" – the role of antinomy in Essex School discourse analysis
Abstract
Poststructuralist Discourse Theory (PDT) is, in my view, a social theory for our time; embracing, as it does, the unconscious and capable of providing new insights into everything from the rise of Trumpian “post truth” through to our collective inability to universally engage with the existential threat of climate change. This article suggests an approach to the empirical analysis of problematised discourses starting from a search for dislocations. I draw from the writings of Laclau, Adorno and Derrida and use Žižek’s Lacanian reading of Hegel to find support for this approach as one useful way to proceed towards new critical explanations and understandings.
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