The last conceptual revolution? The place of language in political philosophy

The dissertation's central claim is that a proper conception of the political requires a proper conception of language: ultimately, one that keeps open—as the condition of possibility of linguistic and political transformation—a dislocation or fracture between the interrelated levels of the semiotic and the semantic. In chapters 1, 2 and 3, I support this claim by showing how three contemporary linguistic-political theories, in contradistinction to their own stated intentions, effectively close their object off to the possibility of transformation.; Chapter 1 deals with the liberal pragmatism of Richard Rorty, which claims an underpinning in Donald Davidson's philosophy of language. Rorty conceives metaphor as a call for innovation in the private lives of individuals. By criticizing the early texts of Davidson relied upon by Rorty, and by showing how he fundamentally misappropriates Davidson's later texts, I show how this conception is grounded in the mistaken idea that metaphor is an extra-linguistic and initially incomprehensible phenomenon.; Chapter 2 discusses Cornelius Castoriadis' philosophy of the imaginary. This philosophy parallels, I claim, the early Nietzsche's understanding of language, art and politics in terms of an opposition between the Dionysian and the Apollinian, or between metaphor (the imaginary) and literal concept (the ensidic). I show that this opposition relies upon an indefensible genetic account of language, one that is rightly discarded by Nietzsche's later genealogical approach.; Chapter 3 focuses on Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics and Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutic understanding of narrative, both of which attempt to ground themselves in the concepts of the hermeneutic circle and dialogue.{09}I show how these concepts contradict another central hermeneutic notion: that of the self-referential play of language.; Chapters 4 and 5 concentrate on the deconstruction of Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida and the philosophy of Giorgio Agamben: contemporary conceptions of language and the political that, in my view, correctly comprehend their object's capacity for self-transformation in terms of a necessary and irrevocable disjunction between semiotics and semantics. Chapter 4 employs de Man's central concepts—ideology, allegory, blindness and insight—in order to pinpoint the limitations of the philosophies previously discussed. Chapter 5 draws a parallel between linguistic and legal sovereignty: both language and law rely upon a distinction—and ultimate indistinction—between meaning and force. The articulation of a non-ideological conception of language—one that keeps open its dislocated and fractured potential for transformation—leads to a rethinking of the political beyond the notion of sovereignty.