Social Antagonisms to be Lecture Topic

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- "The Discursive Construction of Social Antagonisms" will be the topic of the third and last lecture in the College of Arts and Sciences Fall Lecture Series at the University at Buffalo.

The lecture will be delivered by Ernesto Laclau, distinguished visiting professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and noted post-Marxist political philosopher, at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 6 in the Screening Room in the Center for the Arts on the UB North (Amherst) Campus. It will be free and open to the public.

Laclau will concentrate on the various categories -- such as empty signifiers, floating signifiers and social heterogeneity -- involved in the study of the specificity of antagonistic relations. Special emphasis will be given to the distinction between equivalent and differential logics and their essential asymmetry, which makes possible the emergence of antagonistic nodal points. The category of "hegemony" as the central concept in political analysis will be addressed, as well as a variety of historical examples.