Global Crisis: Theory, Method and the Covid-19 Pandemic 3031251393, 9783031251399

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Structure of the Book
References
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 From Crisis Decision-Making to Discourse Theory
1.1 Crisis Decision-Making
1.1.1 Summary and Critique
1.2 Constructivism
1.2.1 Summary and Critique
1.3 Critical Realism
1.3.1 Summary and Critique
1.4 Discourse Theory
1.4.1 Summary and Critique
References
2 The Discursive Character of the Social
2.1 Foundations of Discourse Theory
2.1.1 Towards Poststructuralist Semiotics
2.2 Discourse and the Discursive
Notes
References
3 The Permanent Dimension of Dislocation
3.1 The Ontological Differentiation of Crisis
3.2 The Ambiguity of Dislocation
3.2.1 The Ambiguity of Dislocation in Poststructuralist Crisis Research
3.3 The Development of Permanent Dislocation
3.3.1 The Real
3.3.2 Hegemony
3.3.3 Ontological Lack
3.4 A Definition of Permanent Dislocation
3.4.1 Permanent Dislocation in Laclau’s Theory
3.4.2 Summary
Notes
References
4 The Recurring Dimension of Dislocation
4.1 The Development of Recurring Dislocation
4.1.1 Radical and Ontic Antagonism
4.1.2 Identification and Ontic Lack
4.1.3 Demands
4.2 A Definition of Recurring Dislocation
4.2.1 Recurring Dislocation in Laclau’s Theory
4.2.2 Summary
Notes
References
5 The Ephemeral Dimension of Dislocation
5.1 Ephemeral Dislocation and Crisis
5.2 A Definition of Ephemeral Dislocation
5.3 The Construction of Ephemeral Dislocation
5.3.1 Translocation
5.3.2 Summary
Notes
References
6 Discourse Analysis
6.1 Corpus Linguistics
6.1.1 A Guide for Analysis
6.2 Rhetorical Analysis
6.2.1 Difference and Equivalence
6.2.2 Hegemony
6.2.3 Antagonism
6.2.4 Dislocation
6.2.5 A Guide for Analysis
Note
References
7 The Coronavirus Crisis
7.1 The Coronavirus Crisis as Ephemeral Dislocation
7.1.1 The Construction of the Coronavirus Crisis
7.1.2 Healthcare
7.1.3 Economy and Defense
7.2 The Antagonistic Construction of the Coronavirus Crisis
7.2.1 Translocation
7.3 Permanent and Recurring Dislocation in the Coronavirus Crisis
7.3.1 Institutionalization
7.3.2 Conclusion
Notes
References
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

GLOBAL POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY

Global Crisis Theory, Method and the Covid-19 Pandemic Nadine Klopf

Global Political Sociology

Series Editors Dirk Nabers, International Political Sociology, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany Marta Fernández, Institute of International Relations, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Chengxin Pan, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Australia David B. MacDonald, Department of Political Science, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada

This new series is designed in response to the pressing need to better understand growing complex global, transnational, and local issues that stubbornly refuse to be pigeon-holed into clearly-defined established disciplinary boxes. The new series distinguishes its visions in three ways: (1) It is inspired by genuine sociological, anthropological and philosophical perspectives in International Relations (IR), (2) it rests on an understanding of the social as politically constituted, and the social and the political are always ontologically inseparable, and (3) it conceptualizes the social as fundamentally global, in that it is spatially dispersed and temporarily contingent. In the books published in the series, the heterogeneity of the world’s peoples and societies is acknowledged as axiomatic for an understanding of world politics.

Nadine Klopf

Global Crisis Theory, Method and the Covid-19 Pandemic

Nadine Klopf Research Group on International Political Sociology Kiel University Kiel, Germany

ISSN 2946-5559 ISSN 2946-5567 (electronic) Global Political Sociology ISBN 978-3-031-25139-9 ISBN 978-3-031-25140-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25140-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Dennis Cox/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Tom Neblung

Acknowledgments

This book benefited from my graduate studies and the early phase of my doctoral research at the Research Group on International Political Sociology at Kiel University. It largely presents a revised and extended version of my master thesis. I wish to thank Anca Pusca and Hemapriya Eswanth at Palgrave Macmillan as well as the series editors Dirk Nabers, Marta Fernández, Chengxin Pan, and David B. MacDonald for making this publication possible. My colleagues in the Research Group on International Political Sociology deserve particular acknowledgment for providing an always supportive but equally critical environment. I am therefore grateful to Merve Genç and Jan Zeemann as well as Frank A. Stengel for his critique on early theoretical arguments and his continuing mentoring. Malte Kayßer provided sophisticated and much appreciated feedback on large parts of the book. I would also like to thank Paula Diehl for her support during my position as her research assistant at Kiel University. Moreover, I benefited from presenting and discussing my research at the 2022 ISA Annual Convention in Nashville, TN and the 2022 EISA Pan-European Conference on International Relations in Athens. My gratitude therefore extends to Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and Erica Resende whose feedback as chairs and discussants helped me to refine my arguments. I would also like to express my gratitude to Soian and Alex for their support and endurance in seemingly endless discussions about social theory and struggles in everyday academic life.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to Dirk Nabers for his continuous support throughout the last years. I thoroughly enjoyed our theoretical discussions, which were of invaluable worth for advancing the theoretical arguments presented in this book and developing an academic rigor that has hopefully become visible in my approach to dislocation. I benefited hugely from Dirk’s always kind but equally merciless critique. Notwithstanding his academic ruthlessness, I met Dirk as an empathetic and understanding person and I am thankful for his always considerate advice. Finally, this book is dedicated to my partner Tom Neblung who deserves my greatest appreciation. I would not have finished this book without his love and support both in times of academic inspiration and personal struggle. Thank you for being the miracle that completes my dislocated identity. Kiel

Nadine Klopf

Introduction

It seems as if our world is shaped by crises that unravel habitual patterns of behavior, disrupt ingrained social practices and institutions, and thus enable us to question established political practices as well as our own actions. Imagining a world without crises appears more like a paradisiacal conjecture, with crises being perhaps the most loyal companion that persistently confronts us. Crises never seem to vanish but, quite the contrary, regardless of how stable social orders are thought to be they are sooner or later overtaken by crises. That is, crises are not merely exceptional phenomena but characterize a permanent state of society. It is therefore not surprising that crisis has always been a subject of research in various disciplines, yet with different and sometimes controversial perspectives as to what is actually meant by the term. Already in the early days of crisis research within International Relations (IR), Charles Hermann declared that “only the vaguest common meaning appears attached to the concept” (Hermann 1969, 410), which has not been resolved during the last decades but, on the contrary, as Colin Hay and Tom Hunt note almost 50 years later, “[i]t is clear that the language of crisis has, if anything, been cheapened” (Hay and Hunt 2018, 6) such that it can rightly be concluded that crisis “remains one of the most illusive, vague, imprecise, malleable, open-ended and generally unspecified concepts” (Hay 1996, 421). It seems that what proliferates in particular is the observation of the contested nature of crisis, as despite notable contributions that have advanced our understanding of

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the term, we have not yet arrived at the point where it becomes possible to thoroughly theorize the specificity of crisis. What remains absent is a systematization that enables us to disentangle the diverse dimensions that crises are considered to be located at. Traditional approaches are particularly interested in how the behavior of decision-makers is altered during a crisis in contrast to periods of non-crisis whereby crises are restricted to ephemeral occurrences that only temporarily destabilize an otherwise stable social order (Brecher and Wilkenfeld 1982; Hermann 1969). Nevertheless, already these early approaches put forward that “decision-makers behave according to their interpretation of the situation, not according to its ‘objective’ character” (Hermann 1972, 12). While still cleaving to an individualist perspective on foreign policy behavior, decision-making approaches open the way towards an understanding of crises that do not regard the latter as mere natural occurrences. This becomes more accentuated in subsequent constructivist research that foregrounds the socially constructed character of crisis, arguing that crises are particularly “what we make of them” (Hay 2013, 23). Notable contributions depart from specifying crises only as temporary occurrences and are explicitly concerned with the structural underpinning that provides the basis for subsequent crisis constructions. Jutta Weldes, for instance, defines crises as socially constructed threats to state identities that are rooted in existing antagonistic relationships which shape how crises are constructed (Weldes 1999, 41). She thus prominently unveils how the Cuban missile crisis can only be understood with recourse to established U.S.–Soviet relations that rendered possible the construction of these events as a threat to U.S. identity (Weldes 1999, 219). Colin Hay also emphasizes a structural dimension of crises when defining the latter as moments of decisive intervention that are made in response to an accumulation of contradictions which, however, merely present the structural precondition for crisis and cannot be equated with crisis as such (Hay 1999, 324). Bob Jessop’s recent critical realist research foregrounds this structural dimension as he stresses that these emerging contradictions stem from an underlying ontological dimension that comprises the interaction of causal mechanisms that might potentially develop towards crisis (Jessop 2015, 239). Whereas Jessop remains concerned with an independently existing materiality as the structural precondition for a crisis, Dirk Nabers’ discourse theoretical approach puts forward how a crisis

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must be understood as a constitutive structural feature of society, without, however, falling back on any form of independent materiality. He conceptualizes structural crisis through the Laclauian notion of dislocation and relates crisis to the “constantly disrupted structure of society or even the very impossibility of society” (Nabers 2019, 265) whereby dislocation is understood as the failure of social structures “to achieve constitution” (Laclau 1990, 47). Instead of treating these varying approaches as utterly incompatible, the emphasis should instead be on how the development of crisis research points towards the conceptualization of crisis as a multilayered concept. The following question thus becomes inevitable and provides the starting point for developing a multidimensional framework of global crisis: How is it possible to systematize crisis? In an increasingly interconnected world, it has become obvious that crises cannot be restricted to the national domain. Ecological threats, climate change, and biological hazards cannot be stopped at national borders, but also more traditional matters of crisis theorizing such as military conflicts, economic adversity, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction might well affect the world at large. However, it is not only global interdependence that requires an analysis of the global character of crises, but every social structure must in principle be approached as partially global. The central argument is that international, transnational, national, and regional social structures partake in a potentially infinite global structure. Communities, nations, regions, and international organizations are historically contingent constructs; they are formed from a global structure that constitutes the social realm. Nabers and Stengel therefore rightly mention that the social must be approached as fundamentally global as it is “spatially dispersed and temporarily contingent” (Nabers and Stengel 2019, 14). This is not meant to downplay the significance of non-global relations, but conceptualizing politics as fundamentally global highlights that meaning remains partial and interminable. The infinitude of the social hence stresses how it is impossible for any identity to be utterly determined and unalterable. This does not release us from analyzing boundaries as every social group requires demarcations to stabilize its identity. However, as boundaries remain subject to contestation and transformation, we have to accept an essential impossibility of final closure, the contestability of meaning, and the potential instability of every articulated identity. Nonetheless, a pure global structure does not exist, but it is always partially embedded in international,

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transnational, national, and regional relations. The global character of crises hence relates to the mutual penetration of global and non-global social structures.

Structure of the Book The book aims at developing a theoretical framework that allows to systematize global crises. In order to do so, established conceptualizations of crisis are first scrutinized which renders visible the positioning of crisis on different dimensions during the development of crisis research (Chapter 1). Against this background, Nabers’ approach to crisis as dislocation is combined with an ontological differentiation of dislocation. This makes it possible to advance a multidimensional framework of crisis as dislocation. As dislocation does not operate as an isolated concept, it first becomes necessary to conceptualize the discursive structures that make up the social realm and provide the basis for theorizing dislocation (Chapter 2). Building on this discursive reading of the social, three levels of crisis are discerned in the subsequent chapters, theorizing crisis at a permanent, recurring, and ephemeral level. Following Heidegger’s differentiation between ontology and ontics, this temporal dimension is supplemented with ontological considerations, leading to the differentiation of permanent ontological, recurring ontic, and ephemeral ontic crisis. The permanent ontological dimension is concerned with the potential structural makeup of society and resonates with Nabers’ definition of crisis as dislocation. Permanent ontological dislocation thus presents a structural characteristic of society, depicting the latter’s impossibility to acquire complete constitution (Chapter 3). This ontological dimension cannot be encountered directly, but it must become manifest at an ontic level. As ontological dislocation is a necessary feature of every society, the latter remains a precarious construct which becomes visible in recurring attempts to acquire stable identities and, accordingly, in the recurring establishment of antagonistic relationships that are constructed as sources of instability. Even if one antagonistic relationship was successfully destroyed, antagonism would merely recur in the construction of different antagonistic others, such that identity remains recurringly destabilized. Dislocation must hence be delineated at a permanent ontological and recurring ontic level whereby the latter presents particular manifestations of the former (Chapter 4).

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Lastly, the existence of temporary crises, which prominently shape established crisis research, is in no way disregarded. As Weldes has already put forward, the construction of ephemeral crises must be traced back to how societies are constituted, which again leads us to an understanding of crisis as dislocation. However, it is not only observed that something is constructed as a crisis but by developing a distinct process of crisis construction, it becomes possible to scrutinize how ephemeral crises are constructed. This is achievable by advancing an ephemeral ontic dimension of dislocation, which relies on both its permanent and recurring dimension (Chapter 5). Dislocation can thus be crystallized in a discursive framework that distinguishes between permanent dislocation, its manifestation in recurring dislocation, and the construction of ephemeral dislocation. Every analysis must take this multidimensional character of dislocation into account. The theoretical framework is therefore linked to methodical considerations that render it possible to utilize dislocation as a framework for practical analyses (Chapter 6). The multidimensionality of crises is finally analyzed in the discourse around the so-called Coronavirus Crisis in the United States which has been constructed as disrupting entrenched social structures to an almost unprecedented degree. The findings show how a multidimensional approach to crises reveals the impact of naturalized social structures, entrenched identities, and established antagonistic relations on crisis constructions. It does not restrict our understanding to the immediate period of crisis construction, but a multidimensional approach sheds light on preexisting deficiencies and structural inequalities as well as on the tasks ahead which politics is burdened with in its continued endeavors to achieve stability (Chapter 7).

References Brecher, Michael, and Jonathan Wilkenfeld. 1982. “Crises in World Politics.” World Politics 34 (3): 380–417. Hay, Colin. 1996. “From Crisis to Catastrophe? The Ecological Pathologies of the Liberal-Democratic State Form.” The European Journal of Social Science Research 9 (4): 421–34. Hay, Colin. 1999. “Crisis and the Structural Transformation of the State: Interrogating the Process of Change.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 1 (3): 317–44.

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Hay, Colin. 2013. “Treating the Symptom Not the Condition: Crisis Definition, Deficit Reduction and the Search for a New British Growth Model.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 15 (1): 23–37. Hay, Colin, and Tom Hunt. 2018. “Introduction: The Coming Crisis, The Gathering Storm.” In The Coming Crisis, edited by Colin Hay and Tom Hunt, 1–10. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Hermann, Charles F. 1969. “International Crisis as a Situational Variable.” In International Politics and Foreign Policy, edited by James N. Rosenau, 409– 21. New York: Free Press. Hermann, Charles F. 1972. “Some Issues in the Study of International Crisis.” In International Crisis: Insights from Behavioral Research, edited by Charles F. Hermann, 3–17. New York: Free Press. Jessop, Bob. 2015. “The Symptomatology of Crises, Reading Crises and Learning From Them: Some Critical Realist Reflections.” Journal of Critical Realism 14 (3): 238–71. Laclau, Ernesto. 1990. “New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time.” In New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, edited by Ernesto Laclau, 3–85. London: Verso. Nabers, Dirk. 2019. “Discursive Dislocation: Toward a Poststructuralist Theory of Crisis in Global Politics.” New Political Science 41 (2): 263–78. Nabers, Dirk, and Frank A. Stengel. 2019. “International/Global Political Sociology.” The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies, 1–28. Weldes, Jutta. 1999. Constructing National Interests: The United States and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Contents

1

From Crisis Decision-Making to Discourse Theory 1.1 Crisis Decision-Making 1.2 Constructivism 1.3 Critical Realism 1.4 Discourse Theory References

1 1 7 15 19 23

2

The Discursive Character of the Social 2.1 Foundations of Discourse Theory 2.2 Discourse and the Discursive References

29 30 41 45

3

The Permanent Dimension of Dislocation 3.1 The Ontological Differentiation of Crisis 3.2 The Ambiguity of Dislocation 3.3 The Development of Permanent Dislocation 3.4 A Definition of Permanent Dislocation References

47 47 49 60 66 71

4

The Recurring Dimension of Dislocation 4.1 The Development of Recurring Dislocation 4.2 A Definition of Recurring Dislocation References

79 79 91 104

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5

The Ephemeral Dimension of Dislocation 5.1 Ephemeral Dislocation and Crisis 5.2 A Definition of Ephemeral Dislocation 5.3 The Construction of Ephemeral Dislocation References

107 107 112 115 122

6

Discourse Analysis 6.1 Corpus Linguistics 6.2 Rhetorical Analysis References

125 129 137 148

7

The 7.1 7.2 7.3

151 151 169

Coronavirus Crisis The Coronavirus Crisis as Ephemeral Dislocation The Antagonistic Construction of the Coronavirus Crisis Permanent and Recurring Dislocation in the Coronavirus Crisis References

175 210

Conclusion

213

Bibliography

217

Index

235

List of Figures

Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2

Covid-19 in U.S. governmental statements, 01/2020–01/2021 Frequent characteristics of the United States in U.S. governmental statements, 01/2020–01/2021

153 160

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List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 7.1

Hjelmslev’s sign model Myth in Barthes’ sign model Frequent words in U.S. governmental statements, 01/2020–01/2021 (categorized)

32 37 152

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CHAPTER 1

From Crisis Decision-Making to Discourse Theory

1.1

Crisis Decision-Making

While the concept of crisis has long been found in various disciplines, including historical, sociological, medical, and psychological research, one of the earliest theoretical engagements within International Relations can be traced back to Charles F. Hermann, whose work has become pioneering for subsequent crisis research. Hermann approaches crisis from a decision-making perspective, being particularly interested in how the behavior of decision-makers is altered during crisis in contrast to periods of non-crisis. In his seminal definition, Hermann specifies crises as events that are unanticipated, threaten major national values, and restrict the time available for response before the situation evolves towards a direction that is less favorable for the decision-makers involved (Hermann 1969, 414). Thus, crisis is seen as a certain type of event, defined by three necessary characteristics which, in this combination, stimulate a decisionmaking behavior that is different from confrontations with non-crisis events (Hermann 1972b, 188). It is not predetermined which events classify as crises since Hermann emphasizes that “decision makers behave according to their interpretation of the situation, not according to its ‘objective’ character” (Hermann 1972a, 12). While Hermann assumes that the behavior of decision-makers is immediately related to the events they confront, he does not confine himself to a simplistic stimulus–response model that regards crises as © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 N. Klopf, Global Crisis, Global Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25140-5_1

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stimulating events, directly provoking certain decision-making responses. Instead, crises only come into existence through the individual interpretation of decision-makers which acts as an intermediary between event stimulus and decision-making response (Hermann 1974, 237). Michael Brecher later proposes a supplemented stimulus–response model that no longer treats decision-makers’ interpretations merely as one-directional processes, by considering feedback loops in the sense that crisis responses influence decision-makers’ subsequent interpretations (Brecher 1977b, 56). Irrespective of these revisions, crises are seen as rooted in material events, but they are only classified as crises through the interpretative practices of decision-makers. In this way, Hermann already introduces the distinction between a material and interpretative dimension which permeates subsequent crisis theory. Essential for Hermann’s definition of crisis is its conceptualization as a foreign policy event which he specifies as an action a particular state undertakes towards at least one foreign target (Hermann 1971, 310). In this sense, crises are understood as deliberate actions initiated by a foreign state towards major national values, such as physical survival, territorial integrity, political sovereignty, economic welfare, and societal stability (Brecher 1977b, 48; Hermann and Brady 1972, 297). Thus, Hermann’s definition of crisis events not only restricts the phenomena that are considered as crises, but his conceptualization of crisis events also acts as a limitation. He emphasizes states as the initiators of crisis events, even though he expands potential initiating actors to opposing forces within a nation, international cartels, and terrorist groups in his later work, without, however, ever losing his focus on states (Hermann 1978, 32–7). Hermann consistently identifies the origin of crises in deliberate actions of human actors and only once mentions briefly the possibility that crises may result from “acts of nature” (Hermann and Mason 1980, 191). Moreover, given his focus on state actors, crisis events are primarily seen as exogenous to a particular state which, to a large extent, excludes the possibility that crises arise from domestic difficulties, injustices, or contradictions. Although Hermann’s contribution to crisis research is characterized by his definition of high threat to major national values, short time for response, and non-anticipation, he adjusts this definition in his later work, incorporating insights from Michael Brecher’s research on crisis

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3

decision-making. Whereas he already tentatively questions the dimension of non-anticipation in his earlier work (Hermann 1972b, 208), it disappears in later crisis definitions (Hermann 1986, 67; 1988b, 122), leading him to consider both crises that emerge suddenly, being unanticipated by decision-makers, and crises that evolve over a protracted period of time (Hermann and Mason 1980, 191–93). In a similar manner, Boin and ‘t Hart replace Hermann’s category of non-anticipation with uncertainty, arguing that crises do not suddenly appear, but they are a “product of escalation” and emerge when “seemingly innocent factors combine and transform into disruptive forces that come to represent an undeniable threat to the system” (Boin and Hart 2007, 46, 49; also Rosenthal et al. 2001, 6). Besides abandoning non-anticipation, Hermann focuses on military hostilities in his later definitions. Following Brecher, he asserts that military activities are perceived as more likely during a crisis (Hermann 1986, 67) which leads him to define crises as “periods of increased belief in the likelihood of war” (Hermann 1988a, 213). He thus puts a strong focus on war, arguing that the likelihood of war is “what a crisis is about” (Hermann 1986, 76) such that avoiding the escalation of crisis to increased military hostility is one of the major purposes of crisis management (Hermann 1978, 29). With this development, Hermann already comes remarkably close to Michael Brecher’s modified definition of crisis that has reached a salient position in IR crisis research. For Brecher, crises denote situational changes in a state’s internal or external environment that decision-makers interpret as threatening to national values, which leaves only finite time for response, and which is accompanied by a high probability of military hostilities (Brecher 1977a, 1). Besides omitting non-anticipation, Brecher puts a strong focus on military hostility, arguing that the “probability of war is the pivotal definition of crisis” (Brecher and Geist 1980, 6). Moreover, when considering situational change, the origin of crisis is no longer bound to deliberate actions towards another target, but it might also result from altered interstate relations, such as changes in belligerent states or military resources (Brecher 1977b, 48), and domestic occurrences, e.g., strikes, demonstrations, riots, or sabotage (Brecher 1979, 449). Brecher explicitly regards crises as both external and internal to states, something which has only been briefly touched upon in Hermann’s work.

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Thus, departing from Hermann’s account of events towards what Brecher subsumes under situational change, that is, a “hostile act, disruptive event or environmental change” (Brecher 1996, 127), broadens the circumstances considered as crisis origins. However, even though crisis triggers include a variety of phenomena, adversary states remain the only crisis actors (Brecher et al. 1995, 376). Non-state actors, such as international organizations, can merely have an intervening function in crisis responses or may provide support for primary crisis actors (Brecher 1984, 259; James et al. 1988, 57). Nohrstedt and Weible, in turn, while relying on a similar decision-making approach, depart from this traditional focus on national crisis actors and contend that crises do not necessarily confront states as a whole, but they might also emerge for certain regional decision-makers (Nohrstedt and Weible 2010, 21). Despite these differences, Brecher remains close to Hermann’s traditional definition. In his later work, however, Brecher becomes increasingly interested in the relationship between decision-making and systemic crises, i.e., crises of the international system. Already before Brecher’s contribution, attempts were made to link Hermann’s decision-making approach to systemic crises. James McCormick, for instance, argues that crisis situations must be reflected on a decision-making as well as systemic level. He adduces Hermann’s traditional definition but supplements it with a systemic criterion, such that crises become visible within the international system through “marked changes in the frequency and intensity of behavior between nations” (McCormick 1975, 25). Whereas such attempts remained fairly unsubstantial in analyzing the relationship between decision-making and systemic crises, Brecher investigates this link more thoroughly. He defines systemic crises as situational changes that are characterized by increased disruptive interactions among states, which are accompanied by changes within structural attributes of the international system, such as power distribution or international rules, actors, and alliances (Brecher and Yehuda 1985, 23). Again, Brecher emphasizes military hostility, adding that disruptive interactions are specified by hostile activities and the probability of becoming involved in war (Brecher et al. 1988, 3; 2000, 39). Even though his account of crisis is tied to the probability of military hostility, he emphasizes that crises do not necessarily escalate to war but decision-makers’ interpretations are “exacerbated by war” such that the “occurrence of war […] intensifies disruptive interaction” (Brecher 1993, 6) between states in the international system.

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5

In proposing a two-dimensional definition of interstate crises, Brecher reinforces his focus on state crisis actors. Whereas decision-making crises focus on the perspective of one state, systemic crises regard the international system as such. These dimensions are inextricably linked as systemic crises only come into being through a previous decision-making crisis which “serves as the precondition, and marks the beginning of an international [systemic] crisis” (Brecher 2008, 9). When situational changes are interpreted as a crisis by national decision-makers, certain crisis responses are adduced which leads to behavioral changes between states. This, in turn, results in a “further distortion in systemic interaction” (Brecher 2018, 48) which denotes a systemic crisis. Whereas Brecher assumes that decision-making crises are necessarily reflected at a systemic level, Phillips and Rimkunas argue that decision-making crises merely put decisionmakers in a state of alert that might potentially result in systemic crises (Phillips and Rimkunas 1978, 268). Brecher’s approach, nevertheless, amplifies the differentiation between an interpretative and material dimension of crisis. While decision-makers’ interpretations are based on material changes in state environments, systemic crises comprise subsequent material transformations of the international system and are thus argued to have an ‘objective’ character (Brecher and James 1986, 26). 1.1.1

Summary and Critique

Even though a decision-making perspective provides pioneering insights into crisis research, it is primarily concerned with decision-making behavior, leaving the conceptual specificity of crisis largely unaddressed. Notably, the predominance of decision-making approaches has not been diminished during the last decades but prevails largely unchallenged in contemporary research. Although notable contributions have advanced these traditional definitions, core aspects remain mostly untouched (Boin et al. 2005; McConnell 2020; Wilkenfeld et al. 2005). The early work of Charles Hermann and Michael Brecher offers systematic definitions, but it mainly focuses on the effects of crisis, advancing crisis as a theoretical variable for further analysis. In this way, the added value is in particular a methodical one that lacks a thorough theoretical conceptualization. However, it is only fair to mention that decision-making approaches were developed to analyze decision-making behavior where crisis appears as an independent variable which necessitates the focus on decision-making processes and omits the possibility that the character of crises is altered

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by decision-makers instead of merely being recognized in their interpretations. A discursive approach does not neglect the pioneering work undertaken by decision-making theory and its insights into foreign policy behavior, but it vindicates the position that crisis theory must be advanced in a different direction. It needs to be noted critically that decision-making approaches rely on the individual interpretations of decision-makers for identifying events that are classified as crises. This, however, presents an individualist perspective that assumes that, while influenced by environmental factors, decision-makers interpret crisis situations individually. It is not reflected on how such interpretations emerge, which, in contrast, is highlighted in constructivist and discourse theoretical approaches that emphasize the socially, or discursively, constructed character of every individual interpretation. Thus, interpretation must be replaced by a notion of crisis construction, since crises can neither be approached independently from the decision-makers that confront them nor from the society they are located in. That is, crises cannot solely be approached as an independent variable that decision-makers act upon, but the nature of crises is constantly seized by social, and discursive, constructions (Hay 2016, 531; Weldes 1999b, 38; Widmaier 2005, 557). Decision-making theory does not escape one-directional crisis response models, although Brecher introduces occasional feedback loops into decision-makers’ interpretations. This does not account for the continuing impact that social structures have on crisis constructions, which are therefore never static, but in principle constantly altered. Decision-making approaches, nonetheless, open the way for treating crisis as an interpretative phenomenon that does not exist naturally without any interpretative, or constructing, practice. This insight is expanded in later constructivist and discourse theoretical research, but decision-making theory teaches us the valuable lesson that we must not reduce crisis to materiality. Decision-making approaches are henceforth advanced in three major directions: (1) Discursive construction of ephemeral crises. Relying on constructivist research, a discourse theoretical perspective regards temporary crises as discursive constructions instead of individual interpretations. Ephemeral crises are thus not identified by their effects on decision-makers but through a distinct process of crisis construction.

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(2) Permanence of structural crisis. These constructions merely present ephemeral moments of destabilization that are rooted in a continuous structural crisis that permeates every society. Hence, combining constructivist and critical realist insights, a differentiation between ephemeral constructed and permanent structural crisis is introduced, which renders it possible to theorize the process of crisis construction. (3) Abandonment of non-crisis. It becomes necessary to abandon the sharp differentiation between crisis and non-crisis, which is usually put forward by decision-making approaches. It is only in more recent research on crisis management that so-called ‘transboundary crises’ are recognized, which blurs the demarcation of distinct crisis periods. Arjen Boin thus argues that “[w]hereas a traditional crisis has a clear beginning and an end, the transboundary crisis cannot easily be pinpointed in time” since “[i]ts roots run deep […] and its effects may be felt years down the road” (Boin 2009, 368). However, even this expansion limits crises to specific events and does not acknowledge that society is confronted with a permanent structural crisis that prevents it from reaching complete stability. This lurking instability, however, often remains obscured and merely becomes accentuated in times of ephemeral crisis. It is in this sense that the traditional association of crisis with instability must be understood: Illusions of stability are linked to non-crisis periods when society appears to be relatively stable. This stability, then, only becomes disrupted during constructed ephemeral crises, which appear as the only type of crises we are confronted with.

1.2

Constructivism

The work of Jutta Weldes presents one of the first theoretical engagements that are concerned with the socially constructed nature of crisis. She highlights that crises cannot be understood independently from the society that decision-makers are situated in since the same material circumstances will be “constituted as different crises, or not as crises at all, by and for states with different identities” (Weldes 1999b, 37). This not only rules out the possibility that crises are ‘natural’ occurrences, waiting to be discovered, but Weldes also shifts the focus from individual interpretations to the social construction of crisis. She contends

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that crises are always constructed in relation to a particular state identity since constructing certain events as crises challenges the state identity in question (Weldes 1999b, 38). In her analysis of the Cuban missile crisis, Weldes thus argues that the crisis was produced “as a serious threat to the well-established cold war identity of the United States” (Weldes 1999a, 219) as a global superpower and preserver of freedom. Hence, crisis can be specified as a threat to a particular state identity which is not ‘objectively’ given but socially constructed (Weldes 1999b, 41). This, however, does not renounce the material circumstances linked to crisis, but taking the Cuban missile crisis as an example, Weldes notes that its social construction does not “deny that missiles were indeed placed by the Soviets in Cuba” but “any interpretation of ‘the missile crisis’, to be plausible, must recognize and account for these missiles” (Weldes 1996, 286). However, this “reality constraint” (Weldes 1996, 286) does not necessitate a particular construction of these occurrences but a variety of constructions remains possible. Thus, while a constructivist approach focuses on the socially constructed meaning of crisis, it does not deny the physical existence of its associated material conditions. Moreover, when events are constructed as crises, state identities are not only threatened, but crises also provide the opportunity to reproduce and reinforce the threatened identity (Weldes 1999b, 38). Weldes thus shows that “having defined a crisis into existence, responding to that crisis enabled the performative reproduction of U.S. identity” (Weldes 1999b, 54) since it required a response from U.S. officials in which the ingrained U.S. identity became reproduced. This is particularly important as states are not linked to any inherent, or essential, identity but state identity must constantly be reproduced in foreign policy practices which crises provide opportunities for (Weldes 1999b, 59). During the Cuban missile crisis, the United States was thus able to reinforce its Cold War identity that had emerged from antagonistic relations towards the Soviet Union. Whereas the latter was presented as totalitarian and aggressive, which led to the construction of the Soviet missiles as necessarily offensive, the United States was constructed in contrast to Soviet totalitarianism, which in turn precluded the possibility that the missiles played a defensive role or that the crisis was engendered by prior U.S. aggression (Weldes 1999a, 128–29). Thus, the Cuban missile crisis was constructed out of existing U.S.–Soviet relations and was tied to a particular U.S. identity which made an alternative construction of the missiles “unintelligible from within the U.S. security imaginary” (Weldes 1999a, 136).

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In contrast to decision-making approaches, Weldes’ analysis of the Cuban missile crisis renders visible that the way decision-makers construct crises cannot be understood without considering threatened state identities, and, at the same time, those antagonistic relations that these identities are constructed against. This also shows that the Cuban missile crisis was not merely about placing missiles in Cuba but these missiles became a “metaphor for the U.S.-Soviet conflict” (Weldes 1999a, 219) which became accentuated during the Cuban missile crisis. Weldes thus concludes that resolving the crisis did not merely involve removing the missiles but the United States was primarily concerned with “maintaining or living up to the identity constructed for the United States” (Weldes 1999a, 219). It becomes clear that ephemeral crises, such as the Cuban missile crisis, hint at a deeper destabilization that has already been present through existing antagonistic relations which are constitutive of every identity. Similar approaches were also developed in the field of constructivist International Political Economy. Mark Blyth, for instance, specifies crises as situations in which actors are uncertain as to what their interests are and how they can realize them (Blyth 2002, 9). Maintaining that crises are not natural phenomena, he thus argues that crisis is to be understood as an “act of intervention where sources of uncertainty are diagnosed and constructed” (Blyth 2002, 10). The diagnosis of a particular crisis is seized by existing ideas actors have, since interests are not naturally given but they are a matter of social construction. Through ideas, actors construct a particular crisis, that is, identify particular origins of uncertainty, since ideas propose particular interests, and at the same time, solutions to crises, which reduces the uncertainty of interests (Blyth 2002, 11). Thus, Blyth’s conceptualization of crisis regards temporary moments of ideational contestation when the way forward becomes uncertain due to actors’ struggle to construct their interests. However, Colin Hay rightly criticizes that crises do not necessarily lead to uncertainty about actors’ interests, but they might also “result in the vehement reassertion, expression, and articulation of prior conceptions of self-interest” (Hay 2008, 69), which has been rendered visible in Weldes’ analysis of the Cuban missile crisis that served to reassert the existing U.S. identity. Crises neither present moments of radical uncertainty nor complete certainty about actors’ interests, but they open a space for contestation that might lead to the reinforcement or transformation of existing social structures. Moreover, Hay rightly asks that if crises denote

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radical uncertainty as to what actors’ interest are, “then how is it that such situations are ever resolved” (Hay 2008, 70)? If ideas already exist that provide actors with interests, situations might appear as utterly uncertain since naturalized social practices might have become interrupted, but these situations are in fact merely contested, since where would those ideas come from that actors adduce to resolve the crisis if the situation was completely uncertain and not framed by any ideas (Hay 2008, 70)? Taking a similar perspective, Widmaier and Baglione define crises as “events that are interpreted as legitimating the transformation of prevailing understandings and interests” (Baglione and Widmaier 2006, 196). While keeping the focus on interests, Widmaier eschews Blyth’s problematic conceptualization of uncertainty by emphasizing the potential of crises to challenge dominant understandings. Interests do not become utterly uncertain during crises, but prevailing understandings, or dominant ideas, are put into question, and it is these ideas that shape, and potentially transform, interests in the first place (Widmaier 2003, 64). Widmaier thus specifies crises through their effect of legitimizing change. This becomes even clearer in his co-authored article with Mark Blyth and Leonard Seabrooke where crises are defined more generally as “events which agents intersubjectively interpret as necessitating change” (Widmaier et al. 2007, 748). In this sense, crises are understood as events that do not alter material relations as such but rather a “set of shared understandings” (Widmaier 2003, 65) since actors cannot react directly to material changes, but how actors respond is mediated through the particular meaning that material relations gain through social constructions. Particular crisis responses are thus shaped by the socially constructed meaning of crises (Widmaier et al. 2007, 748). However, Widmaier emphasizes that this approach does not deny the materiality of crises but “highlights the discourses which frame material change” (Widmaier 2007, 785). Even though this might bear a slight resemblance to decisionmaking approaches that propose an interpretative intermediary between event stimulus and decision-making response, Widmaier’s emphasis on the socially mediated character of crises is not one-directional and does not include occasional feedback loops. But he notes that intersubjective understandings of crises are “sustained or transformed through ongoing interaction” (Widmaier 2005, 557), such that the meaning of crises is constantly seized by social practices. Focusing both on institutional change and underlying destabilizing structures within society, Hay’s work presents perhaps one of the most

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sophisticated approaches to constructivist crisis theory. He defines crisis as “a moment of decisive intervention in the process of institutional change” (Hay 1999, 320), as during crisis, entrenched state structures may be overcome and “a new projection of a future state regime is constructed” (Hay 1999, 322). Thus, crisis is inextricably linked to the process of state transformation since the state is rendered as in need of decisive intervention, and, at the same time, a particular institutional trajectory is proposed to resolve the crisis (Hay 1996b, 254). Importantly, the opportunity to make decisive interventions is not naturally given through institutional developments, but it is socially constructed as a “moment in which those capable of making a response at the level at which the crisis is identified perceive the need to make such an intervention” (Hay 1996a, 424). This intervention is made in response to state failure, that is, to an “accumulation or condensation of contradictions” (Hay 1999, 324). However, actors cannot respond directly to such failures, but the latter must be mediated through social constructions which transforms failure into crisis (Hay 1996a, 423). Thus, failure merely presents the structural precondition for crisis to emerge and does not neatly correspond to crises that are constructed based on an identified state failure, but the latter can give rise to a variety of different crisis constructions (Hay 1995, 64). Hence, the decisive interventions made to resolve crises depend on how social constructions give meaning to state failure. This also means that the way forward is not predetermined but a matter of contestation which might result in the transformation of institutional structures, while crises can also serve to reinforce existing structures, depending on which crisis construction prevails (Hay 2013a, 49; 2013b, 24). Against this definition, Hay develops a process of crisis and institutional change. He proposes that crises emerge through an accumulation of unresolved contradictions that eventually consolidate as state failure. Thereby, varying contradictions are identified as symptoms of a generally deficient state (Hay 1996b, 255). In this process, their specificity becomes denied and they are constructed in a particular “abstracted and simplified meta-narrative” (Hay 1996b, 267) of state failure. In this way, multiple disparate events can be accommodated within the same crisis construction. This might also serve to reinforce a particular construction of state failure since the “crisis diagnosis is conformed in each new ‘symptom’ that can be assimilated within this metanarrative” (Hay 1995, 72). However, Hay emphasizes that “there is no objective point at which a given weight of contradictions will necessarily precipitate a crisis” (Hay 2010, 465) but

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the identification of failure as crisis remains a matter of social construction. While there might emerge competing crisis constructions, a dominant construction will eventually prevail that is linked to distinct decisive interventions, proposing a particular institutional trajectory which might either reinforce or challenge existing institutional structures (Hay 1999, 331; 2014, 66). The success of dominant crisis constructions is not determined by their accuracy to reflect material failures, but they are judged on their “ability to provide a simplified account sufficiently flexible to ‘narrate’ a great variety of morbid symptoms” (Hay 2001, 204). Hay thus proposes a process of institutional transformation that alternates between crises and periods of relative stability in which crises appear as rare disruptions that destabilize an otherwise apparently stable society before culminating contradictions result in another construction of state failure. This crisis cycle is supplemented by Stuart Croft, who suggests two alternative paths in case dominant institutional structures are challenged by arising contradictions. As it has been put forward by Hay, when the dominant institutional order becomes contested by emerging contradictions, it is possible that state failure is constructed as crisis, leading to decisive interventions and institutional restructuring. At the same time, however, Croft emphasizes the possibility that the dominant order might adapt to arising contradictions which only supports its further reinforcement. Eventually then, it reaches the point where it cannot adapt to further contestation, resulting again in crisis and potential institutional transformation (Croft 2006, 272–74). This, however, in no way contradicts Hay’s theorization of state transformation, but supplements it with what has already been implicit in Hay’s work. 1.2.1

Summary and Critique

While constructivist research highlights how crises are socially constructed, it generally remains unclear where those ideas come from that give rise to crisis constructions in the first place. With the notable exception of Weldes’ work that emphasizes how crises emerge from existing antagonistic relations, it usually remains untold how we come to understand social circumstances in one way rather than another, that is, how we come to construct certain phenomena as a particular kind of crisis or not as a crisis at all. These steps therefore become necessary:

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(1) Discursive construction of ephemeral crises. A discourse theoretical approach does not focus on the intersubjective construction of crises but highlights their discursive construction, which serves as a prerequisite for social constructions. Discourse theory as henceforth understood does not merely include linguistics but emphasizes how meaning is produced through a variety of linguistic utterances, material conditions, visuality, social practices, etc. Discursive structures produce us as subjects in the first place, and thereby also our capability of intersubjective negotiations. (2) Departure from actor-centrism. The construction of crisis is then detached from the constructivist trend of focusing on a limited number of actors who are capable of constructing crises. Not only do traditional decision-making approaches restrict the interpretation of crisis to few national decision-makers, but constructivist research is also frequently focused on the constructions of state officials (Weldes 1999b, 37), leaders (Widmaier 2007, 792), or actors that are capable of making decisive interventions (Hay 1995, 64). Although being a noteworthy development, this is also not remedied by approaches that broaden the scope to include both elites and the mass public (Seabrooke 2007, 807; Widmaier et al. 2007, 749; also Weldes 1999b, 58). A discourse theoretical approach renders visible how any form of intersubjectivity is always underpinned by discursive constructions which are thus given, at least analytical, priority. (3) Permanence of structural crisis. A discourse theoretical perspective also reveals how every crisis construction emerges from an underlying structural dimension, which Hay’s work has already pointed towards. Whereas Hay proposes an explicitly material underpinning of constructed crises when discussing the accumulation of structural contradictions, a discursive process of crisis construction does not start from the assumption of necessarily material preconditions. This, however, does not deny the materiality of crises since crisis constructions are not merely treated as linguistic practices, but the differentiation between linguistic/extra-linguistic or material/non-material is discharged in favor of inclusive discursive constructions that regard both dimensions. Thus, discursive constructions are not merely ‘ideational’ if the latter is to denote linguistic constructions or processes of crisis construction taking place ‘in our minds’. Against this background, Weldes’ work

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becomes particularly important when it, too, hints at a structural underpinning of crisis constructions by emphasizing how the Cuban missile crisis emerged from existing U.S.–Soviet relations. In contrast to Hay, Weldes highlights the ideational dimension of the antagonistic relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. Even though she is particularly concerned with an ideational dimension, her focus on antagonism already comes close to a discursive perspective that highlights how ephemeral crisis constructions emerge from an underlying structural destabilization, which, however, can neither be regarded as merely material nor linguistic but as explicitly discursive. It is at this point that crisis can no longer solely be treated as a temporary occurrence that disrupts an otherwise stable society, but crisis must be approached as a multidimensional phenomenon. Hay’s concern with material contradictions and Weldes’ emphasis on antagonistic relations, while focusing on different aspects, already denote a distinct structural dimension of crisis. It thus becomes necessary to systematize crisis, differentiating between ephemeral constructed and permanent structural crisis. This stands in contrast to Hay’s argument that crises cannot be permanent because “a perpetual crisis would be one that does not directly threaten the stability of the system, one that does not result in decisive intervention” since otherwise “the unresolved crisis would rapidly degenerate into catastrophe – the collapse of the state” (Hay 1995, 63). Yet, we are indeed confronted with a permanent structural crisis, which, however, is often obscured such that societies appear to be stable despite being destabilized. In this way, we are not sliding towards catastrophe and the annihilation of institutional structures, but live in the guise of a relatively stabilized social order. Similarly, Hay remarks that crisis “is not some objective condition or property of a system defining the contours for subsequent ideological contestation” but it is only “brought into existence through narrative and discourse” (Hay 1996b, 255). While it is certainly right that ephemeral crises only emerge through constructions, crisis can indeed be regarded as a condition of a system, yet not an ‘objective’ one if the latter is to be understood as linked to some sort of ‘natural’ unmediated materiality. Rather, crisis characterizes a constitutive structural feature of every society that only becomes accentuated during temporary constructed crises. Conceptualizing crisis as a permanent structural characteristic of society

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and, at the same time, through ephemeral constructions is not mutually exclusive, but it requires a multidimensional approach. Recent critical realist crisis theory has developed towards a similar direction, differentiating crisis on distinct ontological dimensions, which thus provides a point of departure for further systematization.

1.3

Critical Realism

Bob Jessop’s work presents perhaps the most sophisticated approach to critical realist crisis theory. He proposes a process-based approach that explores “transformative phenomena that unfold over space–time” (Knio and Jessop 2019, 7) before eventually culminating in crisis. From this perspective, crisis is not seen as an instantaneous phenomenon, but Jessop is concerned with the trends leading towards crisis. This also stands in contrast with traditional decision-making approaches since crises are not utterly unanticipated but interwoven in more complex crisis dynamics that, theoretically, might be recognized in advance. These crisis dynamics can be located in what Jessop regards as the ‘objective’ dimension of crisis that comprises the material preconditions for every ‘subjective’ construction (Jessop 2012a, 19). While this assumption provides the basis for Jessop’s multilayered approach, it certainly contradicts previously discussed constructivist research. However, even though his focus on an independent materiality must be viewed critically, Jessop’s work proves nonetheless fruitful for advancing towards a further systematization of crisis. Jessop does not merely propose a differentiation between materiality and construction but develops a more nuanced conceptualization of crisis based on Bhaskar’s tripartite ontology, distinguishing ‘real’ mechanisms from ‘actual’ events and ‘empirical’ observations (Jessop 2015c, 239; see also Bhaskar 2008, 47). Although the general differentiation between an ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ dimension of crisis somehow resonates with this three-dimensional approach, since the ‘real’ and ‘actual’ layers comprise materiality, Jessop does not assume particular material conditions as the starting point for theorizing crisis. Rather, he stresses potential material circumstances leading to crisis by rooting the latter in a ‘real’ dimension that circumscribes a variety of entities connected by potential causal mechanisms that might tendentially develop towards crisis. In this sense, Jessop contends that crisis becomes manifest “in specific conditions of an abstract possibility of crisis where the balance between crisis

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tendencies and counter-tendencies tips in favour of crisis” (Jessop and Knio 2019, 270). Thus, the ‘real’ layer encompasses the constant interaction of causal mechanisms, or tendencies, which might develop towards an ‘actual’ material crisis. Jessop thereby introduces an explicitly structural underpinning since the tipping point towards crisis is reached when “contradictions and crisis tendencies can no longer be managed, displaced or deferred” (Jessop 2013b, 12), that is, when ‘antagonisms’ develop that are grounded in specific structural mechanisms (Jessop 2019, 53). These antagonisms become apparent when “accepted views of the world” (Jessop 2012b, 24) are disrupted and social relations “cannot be reproduced […] in the old way” (Jessop 2015a, 486). Crises can thus be traced back to causal mechanisms that give rise to particular triggering events which reveal exactly these underlying structural factors, that is, contradictions that are unable to be managed within the existing social order. However, Jessop emphasizes that crises cannot be reduced to this material dimension since a “crisis is never a purely objective, extrasemiotic event” (Sum and Jessop 2014, 396), but actors first have to make sense of material occurrences and their underlying structural mechanisms. Yet, as it is impossible to completely observe these mechanisms, constructions of particular crises necessarily remain partial and are thus open to contestation (Jessop 2015c, 240). While emerging from material crises, constructions cannot simply be derived from them such that no specific construction is predetermined by its underlying causes. Nevertheless, some constructions still reflect more adequately causal mechanisms than others. However, even more inadequate constructions might have “constitutive effects” (Jessop 2019, 62) in the sense that they can shape discourses by acting upon crisis constructions of others and by affecting the transformation of political institutions. The detection, observation, and construction of particular crises is encompassed in what Jessop regards as the ‘empirical’ dimension of crisis. Importantly, however, constructions must always be rooted in material conditions in order to be legitimately referred to as crisis. Otherwise, we would be confronted with ‘manufactured’ crises that are merely constructed phenomena without any material foundation (Sum and Jessop 2014, 396). Critical realist theory is thus particularly concerned with an independently existing materiality that is supposed to explain the emergence of crisis, stressing that the existence of crises “must be independent from

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how we perceive them” (Knio 2019, 42). At the same time, it is acknowledged that crises cannot remain unmediated, but actors give varying meanings to crises through social constructions which not only shape how material crises are understood, but how crises are constructed also influences which decisions are made in response (Jessop 2015a, 487). This prevalent position of materiality is also reflected in how Jessop conceptualizes the process of crisis construction that he subdivides into three stages from an initial plethora of different constructions to the eventual retention of a particular construction and its institutional implementation. Initially stable structures become destabilized through the emergence of material crises which give rise to a multiplicity of varying crisis constructions that enable the “(re-)politicization of sedimented discourses and practices” (Jessop 2013a, 238). However, only some of these constructions get selected, while others disappear or become marginalized. Eventually, one dominant construction prevails and disrupted social structures become re-sedimented, leading again to a seemingly stable society. Jessop highlights that in this process, both materiality and construction remain co-present. Yet, whereas construction is particularly important during the initial phase, materiality becomes prevalent along the way to retention (Jessop 2013a, 238), since only those constructions “that grasp key emergent and extra-semiotic features of the social and natural world are likely to be selected and retained” (Jessop 2015b, 99). Nevertheless, there is always the possibility that dominant constructions become contested by oppositional and marginalized discourses that remain present in the relative stability of the dominant social order (Jessop 2015b, 110). 1.3.1

Summary and Critique

It must be noted critically that Jessop’s process of crisis construction assumes as its starting point a sedimented, seemingly stable discourse where social structures have become naturalized and are taken for granted. This apparent stability then becomes disrupted through a crisis which re-politicizes that discourse and opens up the field for the transformation of social structures that become re-sedimented after the crisis is resolved. Even though Jessop cites the categories of sedimentation and re-politicization from the Laclauian work of Howarth and Glynos (Jessop 2013a, 235), Laclau is particularly concerned with the co-presence of both aspects such that we are never confronted with an un-politicized

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discourse (Laclau 1990, 35). While it is certainly right that social structures generally appear to be stable, sedimentation and re-politicization cannot be broken down into a linear process but must be approached as co-present. Accordingly, crisis must not be restricted to the temporary disruption of sedimented discursive structures, but it must also be approached as a permanent structural feature of every society since the point of complete sedimentation cannot be reached. Nevertheless, the general process of crisis construction from proliferation to retention cannot be renounced from a discourse theoretical perspective, even though the theorization of each step remains problematic, not least due to Jessop’s emphasis on materiality throughout the construction process. His ontological differentiation of crisis is grounded in an independent materiality, consisting of natural causal mechanisms that serve to explain the emergence of crises. Despite this problematic foundation of Jessop’s theory, he offers valuable insights that will be a point of departure for developing a discursive framework of global crises: (1) Discursive construction of ephemeral crises. While it is certainly correct that ephemeral crises are rooted in complex social structures that are seized by destabilizations, crises cannot be seen as the culmination of prior contradictions, as some sort of development towards the point where such contradictions cannot be integrated into the existing social order. Rather, while being constituted within an inherently, and permanently, destabilized structure, the emergence of ephemeral crises does not depict the disintegration of this order, but it renders visible its permanent underlying destabilization. That is, ephemeral crises temporarily reveal the constitutive structural crisis at the heart of every society. Jessop, nonetheless, paves the way towards an understanding of ephemeral crises that are rooted in an underlying structural dimension, even though the latter will be largely rethought. (2) Permanence of structural crisis. Jessop further introduces an Althusserian notion of antagonism in order to explain the condensation of contradictions which, despite carrying the same problem of an independent materiality, cannot be completely renounced but rather must be advanced towards a discourse theoretical understanding of the term. As long as crisis is understood through Althusserian antagonism, that is, as the culmination of contradictions that cannot be managed within an existing social order,

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crisis remains located at a given point in time, even if precrisis dynamics are considered in its emergence. However, if crisis is to be understood as a permanent structural characteristic of society, antagonism must be rethought, which becomes possible by departing towards a Laclauian account of antagonism that, nevertheless, remains derived from Althusser. Antagonism then becomes a permanent feature in the constitution of every society and, at the same time, renders it inherently destabilized. Through a Laclauian understanding of antagonism, it thus becomes possible to conceptualize crisis both as constructed ephemeral instances and as a permanent characteristic of society that makes ephemeral constructions possible in the first place. (3) Discursivity of crisis. This includes the departure from an independent materiality as the precondition for structural destabilization, which, however, does not leave us with mere linguistic constructions, but a discursive approach dissolves the differentiation between materiality and linguistics in favor of an inclusive perspective that considers material and linguistic aspects as equally meaningful entities in the discursive construction of crisis. The critical realist rejection of constructivist approaches thus becomes at least partly softened, because it criticizes constructivist research for treating crises as an “exclusively discursive object” (Rycker and Mohd Don 2013, 5) which, however, assumes a purely linguistic understanding of discourse which is explicitly renounced from a Laclauian perspective. The critique that ignoring the independent materiality of crisis would have as its consequence that “just any arbitrary event or sequence of events is socially constructed into crisis” such that crisis becomes a “vacuous signifier” (Rycker and Mohd Don 2013, 20) can hence be refuted by introducing an inclusive discourse theoretical approach that conceptualizes the specificity of crisis constructions against the backdrop of permanent structural crisis.

1.4

Discourse Theory

Dirk Nabers’ work provides pioneering insights into a discourse theoretical conceptualization of structural crisis that emphasizes how crisis cannot be reduced to ephemeral moments of destabilization but must be understood as a permanent constitutive feature of society. By introducing

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the Laclauian notion of dislocation into crisis theorizing, he renders it possible to explore the conceptual specificity of crisis, both as ephemeral instances and as a permanent structural feature. At the same time, dislocation provides the theoretical background that is necessary for linking these dimensions. Following Laclau, dislocation generally characterizes the inherent incompleteness of society, its failure to achieve stability, and thereby also the ongoing disruption that prevents society from being completely constituted or stable. In this sense, Laclau defines dislocation as the failure of social structures “to achieve constitution” (Laclau 1990, 47). Thus, social structures remain inherently incomplete and unstable since dislocation never vanishes but remains as constitutive for every society. Along these lines, Nabers conceptualizes structural crisis as dislocation and argues that “crisis is related to the constantly disrupted structure of society or even the very impossibility of society” (Nabers 2019, 265). Hence, seemingly stable social structures remain essentially destabilized since those practices, norms, rules, and institutions that are taken for granted by large parts of society, that is, what has been institutionalized or has become sedimented, is in fact constantly dislocated, even if it appears to be stable. In this sense, Nabers foregrounds that, in the first place, dislocation refers to the dislocation of “sedimented practices” (Nabers 2017, 422). Hence, dislocation is closely related to the always contested and thus potentially changing character of society and highlights that society is an essentially precarious construct that cannot be approached as a fixed entity. 1.4.1

Summary and Critique

It remains problematic that the tension between an ephemeral and a permanent dimension of dislocation has never been resolved in Laclau’s work and continues to permeate Nabers’ research. Thus, even though he decisively highlights structural crisis as a “permanent and necessary feature of society” (Nabers 2015, 3) and opposes the assumption that it can be defined as “some momentary condition that surfaces from time to time” (Nabers 2015, 2), the differentiation between a permanent and an ephemeral perspective seems to be blurred at times. Emphasizing that dislocation circumscribes the failure of society to be ultimately constituted or stable, Nabers defines crisis as “a lack, deficiency, or failure in the social fabric” (Nabers 2015, 3) but shortly afterwards links society to its “constitutive lack, manifold crises, and voids” (Nabers

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2015, 4), which raises the question how lack, crisis, and void can be aligned if crisis as such is already specified as lack. Moreover, mentioning ‘manifold crises’ suggests that there must be multiple crises of some sort that are conceptually different from crisis as a permanent attribute of society, since how would crisis as the mere quality of lack, deficiency, or failure be multiple in nature? Along these lines, he describes crisis as “a lack, a void, or gap within the social fabric” (Nabers 2015, 118) but, at the same time, states that dislocations “produce voids” (Nabers 2015, 100) in the first place, which, again conflates the notion of crisis and void and urges to assume that dislocation does not merely point towards the ontological quality of lack or failure. This becomes even clearer when Nabers argues that “crises or dislocations […] must be seen as constant political constructions” (Nabers 2015, 27). However, a permanent crisis as such cannot be equated with discursive constructions, even though it certainly needs to be constructed in one way or another for it to acquire meaning and to be acted upon. Despite resemblances to the general differentiation between structural permanent and constructed ephemeral crisis, Nabers’ work does not merely reproduce this demarcation, but it indicates that permanent dislocation itself must be subdivided into two distinct dimensions. It is this multidimensionality that explains Nabers’ seemingly confusing conceptualization of dislocation. Two steps must thus be taken: (1) Multidimensionality of crisis. Dislocation cannot just be delineated at an ephemeral and permanent level, but we must differentiate between an ephemeral, a permanent as well as a recurring dimension of dislocation. Permanent dislocation can be specified as the incompleteness of society, or its failure to achieve stability. It is this dimension which is confused with repeated occurrences of particular deficiencies in the social fabric. However, permanent dislocation must become manifest in ever-new deficient social structures, that is, in recurring dislocation. Only in its recurring dimension can dislocation be continuous and multiple. It is finally in constructed ephemeral dislocations that the constitutive structural destabilization of society eventually becomes visible. Nabers’ work must thus not be seen as generally inconsistent, but it instead renders visible the complexity of dislocation that has yet to be systematized.

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(2) Relationality of crisis. Nabers remains particularly concerned with a permanent dimension of dislocation, such that the relation between permanent and ephemeral dislocation is not always entirely clear. He states, for instance, that “[i]n the event of dislocation, competing political forces will endeavor to hegemonize the gap between purity and distortion” (Nabers 2017, 422), that is, between the alleged stability of society and its anticipated disruption. This, however, urges to assume that dislocation is not always used strictly to refer to an underlying quality of society, but it appears to denote anticipated ruptures, which points towards an ephemeral perspective on dislocation. Similarly, Nabers argues that dislocation entails some sort of intensity, stating that there are “bigger and smaller dislocations” (Nabers 2015, 27) and “the more far-reaching the dislocation of a discourse is, the fewer principles will still be in place after the crisis” (Nabers 2015, 126). This lays bare that dislocation is not merely used to describe a permanent structural feature of society, but this use of dislocation hints at some sort of discursive construction. This becomes more explicit in his later work where he links “crises of different degrees” (Nabers 2019, 267) to their construction through discursive practices that “perform the crisis ‘into existence’” (Nabers 2019, 267) in the first place. It will hence be necessary to clarify the link between the different dimensions of dislocation, which leads us to systematizing three distinct but interrelated dimensions of the term. Nabers, nevertheless, offers an intriguing perspective on crisis as dislocation and decisively foregrounds an understanding of dislocation as a permanent attribute of society, which becomes particularly clear in his analysis of the events on September 11, 2001 when he argues that “the event of ‘9/11’ was not a crisis in itself, but laid bare the fundamentally dislocated character of the American […] society” (Nabers 2015, 107). Yet, the occasional inconsistencies in Nabers’ references to dislocation hamper a systematization of crisis into distinct dimensions. Regardless of this ambiguity, his work is fundamental for a genuine theoretical engagement with crisis and provides a point of departure for advancing a discourse theoretical framework that conceptualizes crisis on three dimensions. Following Nabers’ account of dislocation, crisis must first be understood as a constitutive characteristic of society that denotes its general

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impossibility to achieve stability. It thus becomes equivalent with a permanent dimension of dislocation. Second, this permanent crisis-ridden nature of society becomes manifest in recurringly deficient attempts to stabilize any meaning—irrespective of whether this concerns identities or the meaning of more abstract concepts like freedom or democracy. Processes of meaning construction are ultimately futile endeavors that represent the recurring dimension of crisis. Lastly, ephemeral crises are rooted in exactly these precarious constructions and can thus only be theorized thoroughly when paying attention to the underlying structural dimensions of crisis. Nabers’ research will hence be advanced towards a multidimensional approach to crisis that systematically scrutinizes its permanent, recurring, and ephemeral dimension. In order to do so, the ambiguity in the concept of dislocation must be overcome which can be achieved by examining the development of dislocation in Laclau’s work. In this way, dislocation is revealed as a multilayered concept that provides the basis for developing a discursive framework of crisis as dislocation.

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Jessop, Bob, and Karim Knio. 2019. “Critical Realism, Symptomatology and the Pedagogy of Crisis.” In The Pedagogy of Economic, Political and Social Crises: Dynamics, Construals and Lessons, edited by Bob Jessop and Karim Knio, 265–83. London and New York: Routledge. Knio, Karim. 2019. “The Diversity of Crisis Literatures and Learning Processes.” In The Pedagogy of Economic, Political and Social Crises: Dynamics, Construals and Lessons, edited by Bob Jessop and Karim Knio, 25–48. London and New York: Routledge. Knio, Karim, and Bob Jessop. 2019. “Introduction: Organizational Perspectives on Crisiology and Learning.” In The Pedagogy of Economic, Political and Social Crises: Dynamics, Construals and Lessons, edited by Bob Jessop and Karim Knio, 3–24. London and New York: Routledge. Laclau, Ernesto. 1990. “New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time.” In New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, edited by Ernesto Laclau, 3–85. London: Verso. McConnell, Allan. 2020. “The Politics of Crisis Terminology.” In The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, 1–15. McCormick, James M. 1975. “Evaluating Models of Crisis Behavior: Some Evidence from the Middle East.” International Studies Quarterly 19 (1): 17–45. Nabers, Dirk. 2015. A Poststructuralist Discourse Theory of Global Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Nabers, Dirk. 2017. “Crisis as Dislocation in Global Politics.” Politics 37 (4): 418–31. Nabers, Dirk. 2019. “Discursive Dislocation: Toward a Poststructuralist Theory of Crisis in Global Politics.” New Political Science 41 (2): 263–78. Nohrstedt, Daniel, and Christopher M. Weible. 2010. “The Logic of Policy Change After Crisis: Proximity and Subsystem Interaction.” Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy 1 (2): 1–32. Phillips, Warren, and Richard Rimkunas. 1978. “The Concept of Crisis in International Politics.” Journal of Peace Research 15 (3): 259–72. Rosenthal, Uriël, Arjen Boin, and Louise K. Comfort. 2001. “The Changing World of Crises and Crisis Management.” In Managing Crises: Threats, Dilemmas, Opportunities, edited by Uriël Rosenthal, Arjen Boin, and Louise K. Comfort, 5–27. Springfield: Charles C Thomas. Rycker, Antoon De, and Zuraidah Mohd Don. 2013. “Discourse in Crisis, Crisis in Discourse.” In Discourse and Crisis: Critical Perspectives, edited by Antoon D. Rycker and Zuraidah Mohd Don, 3–65. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Seabrooke, Leonard. 2007. “The Everyday Social Sources of Economic Crises: From ‘Great Frustrations’ to ‘Great Revelations’ in Interwar Britain.” International Studies Quarterly 51 (4): 795–810.

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CHAPTER 2

The Discursive Character of the Social

A discursive approach requires a thorough conceptualization of the discursive structure making up the social realm since crisis cannot be specified as an isolated concept. On the contrary, it is deeply linked with the constitution of identity and plays a major role in the construction of antagonistic relations. Thus, before scrutinizing crisis, it is necessary to lay bare the discursive character of the social as the point of departure for further theorization. In order to do so, a Laclauian notion of discourse is introduced which makes it possible to comprise the complexity of social phenomena apart from a merely linguistic perspective. Initially deriving his understanding of discourse from Saussurean semiotics, Laclau touches upon the linguistic developments of Louis Hjelmslev, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Derrida, leaving not only structuralist semiotics behind but also the focus on mere linguistics. However, even though a conceptualization of crisis as dislocation revolves around a Laclauian notion of discourse, it becomes necessary to scrutinize its semiotic background more thoroughly since semiotics provides us with the structural precondition for engaging in a permanent ontological dimension of dislocation.1 In fact, permanent ontological dislocation can only be understood on the basis of an advanced understanding of post structuralist semiotics.

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2.1

Foundations of Discourse Theory

Saussure had already put forward that language is essentially social and must be approached “outside the individual who can never create nor modify it by himself” (Saussure [1916] 1959, 14). Language is then seen to comprise a “system of signs” (Saussure [1916] 1959, 16) that comes into being only through actors’ collective, or intersubjective, practices. Importantly, these signs are not purely linguistic as Saussure is, in principle, also concerned with social institutions such as rites or customs (Saussure [1916] 1959, 17). Linguistics is merely a part of the broader field of semiotics that Saussure introduces as a distinct discipline. Thus, a Saussurean understanding of discourse is not restricted to linguistic practices, text, or speech, but it is explicitly concerned with both a linguistic and extra-linguistic dimension. As semiotics particularly explores the constitution of signs, including the production of meaning, linguistics presents only one aspect which must be accompanied by a social dimension that explores how signs are socially produced (Saussure [1916] 1959, 16). Nevertheless, Saussure himself remains preoccupied with language and prominently introduces a definition of signs that comprises signified and signifier. While the former denotes a certain concept, the latter regards its corresponding ‘sound-image’, i.e., the impression a particular sound “makes on our senses” (Saussure [1916] 1959, 66), which simply comes down to words that remain unspoken. This definition follows Saussure’s argument that speaking is unrelated to the linguistic notion of signs. The relationship between signified and signifier further remains arbitrary, that is, it precludes any natural connection (Saussure [1916] 1959, 67). While a sign carries a distinct concept, its corresponding signifier might differ, and across languages, varying terms might be adduced to refer to the same concept since no term is destined to designate a certain concept. Nonetheless, within a given language, the realm of signifieds corresponds to the realm of signifiers in a way that signifieds and signifiers become congruent, even though corresponding signifiers might be transformed (Saussure [1916] 1959, 104). Moreover, Saussure prominently puts forward that signifieds are not characterized by an internal meaning, but they only acquire meaning through their differentiation from other signifieds (Saussure [1916] 1959, 117). Freedom, for instance, bears no meaning in itself but can only be understood when differentiated from oppression, subjection, tyranny,

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etc. Thus, in order to gain meaning, each signified requires the “simultaneous presence of the others” (Saussure [1916] 1959, 114). The same holds true for signifiers, or acoustic images, since what distinguishes signifiers are phonic differences (Saussure [1916] 1959, 118). In this sense, Saussure concludes that “in language there are only differences without positive terms” since “language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences” (Saussure [1916] 1959, 120). It follows that if a system is limited to a given number of signs, as Saussure suggests, the meaning of a particular sign can be completely determined since within a particular language signs are finite. Accordingly, when extending language to society, which was later undertaken by a range of poststructuralist thinkers, including Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, and Ernesto Laclau, we would assume that society consists of a number of signifieds, reaching from ordinary material objects to social practices and institutions, which converge with a given number of linguistic designations such that each concept is symbolized by a particular term. However, regarding society through this dualist logic of signifieds and signifiers is problematic. Even within language, concepts remain essentially fuzzy and cannot be reduced to a particular corresponding term. Rather, various terms attempt to grasp the specificity of a concrete concept, while putting focus on divergent aspects such that no term can comprise a concept entirely. This becomes particularly clear when confronted with more abstract concepts such as democracy, freedom, or equality. Moreover, proposing a given chain of signs that make up language, or society, leaves society essentially static since the components making up society remain fixed with only their signifiers being open to change. If, however, this critique is taken seriously, the strict convergence of signifieds and signifiers dissolves just as the limitation of society to a given number of signs. In this way, meaning escapes every delineation and is essentially precarious. Along these lines, Laclau proceeds towards an explicitly post structuralist approach to discourse by considering the semiotic developments of Louis Hjelmslev, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Derrida. Even though Hjelmslev remains mostly implicit in Laclau’s work, his advancement of Saussurean semiotics serves as a fruitful bridge towards an understanding of discourse beyond mere linguistics. Whereas Saussure decisively advocated that signs must be decoupled from their manifestation in speech, Hjelmslev brings materiality back in and supplements

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Saussure’s approach by conceptualizing the relation between signs and materiality, including speech. In contrast to Saussure who defines signs through signifieds and signifiers, Hjelmslev distinguishes between content and expression, which to some extent resonates with Saussure’s differentiation between signifieds and signifiers. These dimensions are rooted in what Hjelmslev regards as ‘purport’ which circumscribes some sort of underlying ‘idea’ that cannot be accessed directly but only becomes accessible when being represented by signs (Hjelmslev [1943] 1969, 52). In some way, this comes close to Saussure’s notion of concept, but whereas concepts can be delineated as distinct entities that must only find expression through particular signifiers, purport comprises an unordered continuum of thought and sounds and must first be given a distinct form. Thus, Hjelmslev’s notion of purport highlights that language cannot be neatly divided into a given number of concepts but first and foremost consists of an amorphous continuum that must be ordered through signs. In order to represent the unordered continuum of purport, Hjelmslev not only introduces content and expression, but he also includes the dimensions of form and substance (see Table 2.1). In a first step, purport acquires form through what Hjelmslev regards as content-form and expression-form. While the former denotes the linguistic attempt to frame purport through text, translating it into a distinct concept, the expression-form consists of phonemes and covers a phonic dimension (Hjelmslev [1943] 1969, 52, 56). Whereas this conceptualization might suffice to define signs as a linguistic concept, Hjelmslev stresses that signs must necessarily be manifested in substances that he divides into contentsubstance and expression-substance. While the latter comprises speech and gesture as possible manifestations of phonemes, content-substance consists of thought as well as materiality that designate how purport becomes manifest in a variety of material objects, visualizations, and social practices (Hjelmslev [1943] 1969, 57, 103). Table 2.1 Hjelmslev’s sign model

Content Expression

Purport

Form

Substance

Unordered thought continuum Unordered sound continuum

Content-form (Text) Expression-form (Phonemes)

Content-substance (Thought, Materiality) Expression-substance (Speech, Gesture)

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As in Saussure, it is not predetermined which manifestation follows from a particular form since the relation between form and substance remains arbitrary. However, the realms of form and substance, while being inextricably linked, do not correspond since a “linguistic form may be manifested by quite different substance-forms” (Hjelmslev [1943] 1969, 97) and is not restricted to become manifest in a single substance. At the same time, the realms of content and expression do not correspond, but the same expression might be linked to diverse contents (Hjelmslev [1943] 1969, 46). In this point, Hjelmslev considerably departs from Saussure’s assumption of two corresponding realms of signifieds and signifiers and introduces a more complex picture of language that explores how the latter is made up of signs through the diverse interplay of text, thought, speech, gesture, and materiality. It is this development that Laclau traces when arguing that “once the strict anchoring of syntactic rules within the linguistic conceived in its narrow, regional sense was removed, it was possible to think in a generalization of those rules far beyond the level of the sentence, so as to embrace social relations as a whole” (Laclau 2012, 238–39). Hjelmslev thus opened the way towards an understanding of discourse that does not differentiate between a linguistic and an extra-linguistic dimension. Moreover, Laclau stresses that one of Hjelmslev’s major advancements is his break “with the strict isomorphism between the order of the signifier and the order of the signified” (Laclau 1989, 68) which is not only related to his supplemented definition of signs, but Hjelmslev also breaks with Saussure’s focus on words as the smallest unit of signs. Whereas Saussure subdivides language into signs that represent distinct terms, Hjelmslev contends that this subdivision must be pursued even further “until the partition is exhausted” (Hjelmslev [1943] 1969, 30). Even though Hjelmslev considerably broadens the number of existing signs, it remains nonetheless finite. While language might be logically subdivided into sentences, words, syllables, etc., there is no natural subdivision in society since every sign might be endlessly subdivided into other signs. These subdivisions do not present a hierarchy or linear arrangement but rather a non-linear conglomeration of related signs, each of which might equally be subdivided such that subdivision proceeds from each sign. For instance, in a particular discourse, the ‘Coronavirus Crisis’ might encompass public health emergency, economic recession, unemployment, death, grief, etc. In turn, these signs can again be subdivided, considering, for example, business shutdowns, debt accumulation, insufficient medical

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supplies, and burdened healthcare systems, which leads subdivision ad infinitum. However, Hjelmslev emphasizes that language must be a finite system; otherwise it would not be possible for signs to be completely constituted, for they merely come into being through differential relations to other signs (Hjelmslev [1943] 1969, 42). Yet, it is exactly this impossibility of complete constitution that arises from an infinity of signifiers and which shapes subsequent semiotic developments, including Laclau’s understanding of discourse. Lastly, Hjelmslev’s notion of purport must be regarded as a particularly fruitful step for theorizing the impossibility of complete constitution, even though Laclau has never explicitly referred to this aspect of Hjelmslev’s work. In a first sense, it might be criticized that purport refers to transcendental ideas that are represented through the always insufficient means of signs that cast purport from a certain point of view. At the same time, however, purport might also point towards the impossibility of constituting meaning completely, yet not due to it being transcendental, but because it would require us to represent an unlimited number of signifiers. In this sense, the amorphous continuum of purport might also hint at the infinity of signifiers that is necessary to constitute complete meaning. Hjelmslev vaguely points towards this direction when arguing that “[e]ach language lays down its own boundaries within the amorphous ‘thought-mass’ [purport] and stresses different factors in it in different arrangements, puts the centers of gravity in different places and gives them different emphases” (Hjelmslev [1943] 1969, 52). Since purport remains inaccessible and “has no possible existence except through being substance for one form or another” (Hjelmslev [1943] 1969, 52), signs are our only means of accessing it. Yet, as signs are insufficient to completely grasp purport, they structure it in different ways or put a focus on different aspects and thereby disguise the entirety of purport that cannot be represented. Therefore, our means of signification are indeed limited since signification presents purport in a certain way and thereby terminates the endless net of related signifiers which, however, is necessary to convey any meaning, even if it is necessarily a partial one. Although Hjelmslev provides the basis for proceeding towards an understanding of discourse beyond mere linguistics and explicitly states that semiotics should be understood as a general logic that surpasses linguistics towards divergent other disciplines (Hjelmslev [1943] 1969, 127), his understanding of signs nonetheless remains centered on a

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linguistic dimension. Since even though he advances Saussure’s conceptualization of signifieds and signifiers, their general functions remain. Saussure’s notion of signifieds no longer refers to neatly distinguishable concepts, but Hjelmslev’s purport takes over the role of signifieds which must be given meaning through processes of signification. Accordingly, signs no longer comprise the entirety of concepts, but they give a particular form to the unordered continuum of purport to make it accessible. Nonetheless, Hjelmslev restricts signs to a linguistic dimension as he merely regards text and speech as possible means for signification. Materiality only comes into play through the manifestation of signs in concrete material objects, thought, speech, or gesture, that is, in content-substance and expression-substance. However, signification cannot be limited to a linguistic dimension but every aspect of social life, including material objects, social practices, visuality, etc., functions as a means of signification since purport cannot merely be represented through text and speech but equally through a variety of material objects. Linguistics does not precede materiality only to become manifested in the latter, but both linguistics and materiality must be regarded as equal means of signification. 2.1.1

Towards Poststructuralist Semiotics

Roland Barthes’ semiotic developments are particularly fruitful for proceeding towards a broadened understanding of signs. Even though his early work is still captivated by structuralist thought, it already paves the way towards establishing semiotics as a general logic of signs beyond linguistics. Barthes not only considers text or speech but also foregrounds that diverse aspects of materiality such as photography, cinema, sports, magazines, transport, clothes, behavior, or appearance function as signs (Barthes [1957] 1991, 108). Following this perspective, we no longer deal with mere language, at least not if the latter is solely understood as a linguistic domain. Instead, Barthes introduces an understanding of language as a system of signs that explicitly encompasses the plethora of possible linguistic and material signs, which leads him to equate language with discourse (Barthes [1957] 1991, 109). For Barthes, then, discourse is generally defined as a “significant unit or synthesis” (Barthes [1957] 1991, 109), that is, a system of signs. It is necessary, however, to explicate Barthes’ understanding of signs. While following the Saussurean definition of signs as the duality of signified and signifier, these concepts acquire an altered meaning in Barthes’ work, accounting for the opening

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of signs towards non-linguistic aspects. Nevertheless, he generally adheres to Saussure’s notion of signified and vaguely defines it as a mental concept “which is meant by the person who uses the sign” (Barthes [1964] 1986, 43). In contrast to Saussure, however, signifieds cannot be neatly delineated but they represent some sort of thought continuum that finds expression through signifiers. Again departing from Saussure, signifiers cannot be reduced to acoustic images of corresponding signifieds, but they encompass a plethora of objects, images, gestures, etc. (Barthes [1964] 1986, 43), encompassing both a linguistic and non-linguistic dimension. Lastly, signs are produced through processes of signification that bind together a particular signified with a variety of possible signifiers. Barthes thus puts forward the direction initiated by Hjelmslev that the realms of signifieds and signifiers do not correspond as signifieds can always be expressed by different signifiers within the same language, or discourse (Barthes [1957] 1991, 119). While Barthes’ work explicitly expands semiotics to a non-linguistic dimension and thus enables us to develop an understanding of discourse that equally comprises both linguistics and materiality, his conceptualization of signs remains problematic due to the vaguely defined concept of signifieds. However, Barthes also provides essential steps to solve this problem as he not only expands semiotics to materiality, but he also prominently introduces his concept of myth into semiotic research. By relating this initially structuralist approach to myth to his later poststructuralist work, it becomes possible to advance towards an altered understanding of signs that dissolves the strict duality between signified and signifier. Barthes proposes a twofold understanding of signs which is divided into language and myth. While language has already been defined as a system of signs, comprising signifieds and signifiers, myth must also be understood as a system of signs, but it functions as a ‘second-order system’ based on language (see Table 2.2). In myth, signs within the system of language are transformed and acquire a second function, that is, they become mythical signifiers. Being rooted in language, mythical signs are produced through the unity of mythical signifiers and mythical signifieds. Myth thus presents some sort of metalanguage “in which one speaks about the first [language]” (Barthes [1957] 1991, 114). However, myth must not be seen as an exception but every language is permanently subjected to myth (Barthes [1957] 1991, 132) which requires

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that every conceptualization of language, or discourse, must consider the functioning of myth. In myth, language appears as an essentially precarious system. Although the precarious character of language has already been acknowledged by Saussure and Hjelmslev, their approaches remained fairly limited, as precariousness was explained through the arbitrary combination of signifieds and signifiers. Thereby, it was possible for languages to become relatively stable systems of signs where signifiers are not constantly altered. This perspective is advanced in Barthes’ work as stabilization, sedimentation, or naturalization are shifted to the mythical level. The principal function of myth then is the naturalization of the contested nature of language into a seemingly stable system where the meaning of signifiers appears to be fixed, that is, where they appear to naturally correspond to a particular mythical signified (Barthes [1957] 1991, 128). This becomes clearer when examining how exactly myth is related to language. Whereas mythical signs and signifiers conceptually differ from their counterparts in language, mythical signifieds are not conceptually different from language signifieds. Thus, just as in language, mythical signifieds are defined as mental concepts that present “the condensation, more or less hazy, of a certain knowledge” (Barthes [1957] 1991, 120). The signified then, regardless of its level, remains a “formless, unstable, nebulous condensation” (Barthes [1957] 1991, 118) and never acquires the distinctness proposed by Saussure. Instead, it is only given form through language signifiers and becomes relatively stable, or sedimented, through mythical signifiers. What differentiates mythical signifieds from language signifieds is the possibility that mythical signifieds refer to another ‘condensation of knowledge’. That is, they might only differ in content. For example, if we think of the language sign ‘public health’, it might concern a signified along the lines of physical integrity, absence of illness, healthcare preparedness, healthcare capacity, etc. For it to be a language signified, however, the contingent meaning of public health Table 2.2 Myth in Barthes’ sign model (based on Barthes [1957] 1991, 113)

Language Signifier (Language) Signified (Language)

Myth Sign (Language) = Signifier (Myth) Signified (Myth)

Sign (Myth)

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must remain visible and must not be overshadowed by a particular, naturalized understanding of the term. This naturalization takes place in myth. While the naturalized mythical sign ‘public health’ might also refer to the aforementioned aspects, it could also regard a different ‘condensation of knowledge’ and include, for instance, accepted shortages in healthcare equipment, a certain threshold for illness, etc. Although we cannot access signifieds directly—neither language nor mythical ones—because they only find expression through signifiers, we can conclude that there might well be cases when mythical signifieds differ from their counterparts in language. Language and mythical signifiers neither correspond in concept nor content. In language, signifiers remain always potentially contested, for varying signifiers might express the same signified or they become altered over time. In this way, signifiers bear some kind of history which, at the level of language, remains at least tendentially present, and never becomes erased (Barthes [1957] 1991, 116). When a language signifier is transformed into a mythical one, it “leaves its contingency behind” such that “history evaporates” (Barthes [1957] 1991, 116). We could observe this in the Covid-19 pandemic, when Donald Trump put forward a particular understanding of public health that included shortages in healthcare equipment and hospital capacity as well as a certain threshold for contraction and illness, but also economic strength struck in Trump’s articulation of public health.2 It was not proposed as an alternative to other views, but Trump’s Coronavirus policies were presented as the most reasonable path to restore public health. Following Barthes’ terminology, what we see here is an example of creating a mythical sign, which obscures its contingent traces and creates an impression of naturalness and self-evidence. However, mythical signifiers never completely suppress language signifiers, but they merely erase their contingent nature, presenting them as the naturalized expressions of certain signifieds (Barthes [1957] 1991, 121). In this sense, Barthes contends that it is impossible for both language and mythical signifiers to vanish, but “the signification of the myth is constituted by a sort of constantly moving turnstile which presents alternately the meaning of the signifier [in language] and its form [in myth]” (Barthes [1957] 1991, 121). This is apparent in the governmental construction of the United States during the Covid-19 pandemic. Trump repeatedly ascertained the United States’ healthcare preparedness and economic strength, constructing a particular mythical version

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of the United States.3 Even though alternative articulations have been marginalized, they can never be completely suppressed, but the contingent nature of language always shines through myths, which has been accentuated during the pandemic as the governmental portrayal of the United States has crumbled under rising infection numbers, a burdened healthcare system, and economic recession. It is at this point that Barthes’ conceptualization of myth can be linked to the general departure towards an understanding of discourse that is rooted in the impossibility of constituting meaning completely. A major problem in Barthes’ work is his holding on to the Saussurean duality of signified and signifier. Whereas signifiers are conceptually advanced, the concept of signifieds remains vague. Even though Barthes adheres to this binarity in his earlier definition of signs, his later work already tends towards an understanding of discourse that makes it possible to leave the sharp differentiation between signified and signifier behind. He later assumes that a system of language exists where one signifier “reflects all the others and so on, to infinity, without there ever being a center to grasp” (Barthes [1970] 1992, 78). Barthes thus makes explicit what has already been criticized in previous semiotic approaches: Language cannot be understood as a closed system, but it expands infinitely such that every signifier is infinitely related to every other signifier, without any center or hierarchy in a non-linear conglomeration of infinite signifiers. However, this does not mean that any meaning becomes impossible but “what is abolished is not meaning but any notion of finality” (Barthes [1970] 1992, 82). Moreover, this conceptualization of language, and accordingly also discourse, is not tied to the duality of signifieds and signifiers but it “diminishes to the point of pure and sole designation” (Barthes [1970] 1992, 83) such that language solely consists of signifiers and their infinite relations to other signifiers, without the need of signifieds. Meaning then does not arise from a vaguely defined signified but from the relational structure of language that infinitely links signifiers through their differential relations. What has traditionally been attempted to be defined as signified is simply the meaning of a particular signifier that emerges from its relations to other signifiers. We are thus confronted with a system of signifiers that serves “to classify the world to infinity, to constitute a space of pure fragments […] which nothing, by a kind of escheat of signification, can or should coagulate, construct, direct, terminate” (Barthes [1970] 1992, 78). If signification aims at constituting one particular

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meaning, it must hence take place on the ‘second-order system’ that Barthes defines as myth, where a signifier is indeed invested with a particular meaning. Yet, this meaning does not reflect an absolute signified, but it presents a segment of the infinite relations that proceed from a particular signifier. In this way, myth naturalizes language since the infinity of meaning, which stems from the infinite relations of signifiers, becomes pinned down to a particular meaning within the realm of myth. Even though Barthes already points towards the abolishment of signifieds, this development becomes even clearer in Jacques Derrida’s critique of Saussure. This also reflects the path taken by Laclau who foregrounds Barthes’ introduction of materiality into semiotics (Laclau 1993, 543) but abstains from engaging in his later conceptualization of language systems. Instead, Laclau derives his notion of discourse particularly from Derrida’s critique of Saussurean semiotics. Derrida expounds how Saussure’s concept of signifieds is particularly problematic because it suggests the metaphysical grounding of signs in some sort of transcendental realm. That is, the differentiation between signified and signifier is a logocentric one, as it assumes the existence of an external reality that is not subjected to any process of signification (Derrida [1967] 1997, 13). The realm of signifieds thus presents some kind of “eternal verity” (Derrida [1967] 1997, 15) that can merely be acted upon but never transformed. The signified remains “possible outside of all signifiers” (Derrida [1967] 1997, 73) and does not acquire its position as a signified through its function of acting as an object of signification but through its peculiarity of presenting a transcendental truth. However, this irreducible transcendence is necessary to uphold the very differentiation between signified and signifier since otherwise it would no longer be possible to separate distinct realms of signified and signifier, but their differentiation would be reduced to their function, one acting as the object of signification, the other as its referent. It is exactly this conclusion that Derrida draws when contending that “the signified always already functions as a signifier” (Derrida [1967] 1997, 7). It becomes impossible to distinguish between signifieds and signifiers as distinct realms since every discursive entity acts equally as signified and signifier. That is, every object of signification, or signified, can merely be found in other signifiers, and more specifically, every signified solely arises from the differential relations of a particular signifier. It is at this point that Derrida converges with Barthes’ semiotic developments

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and it becomes possible to formulate a post structuralist understanding of discourse that appears most sophisticatedly in Laclau’s work.

2.2

Discourse and the Discursive

Discourse is not solely understood through a linguistic dimension, but it is first and foremost a system of signs that comprises both a linguistic and extra-linguistic sphere. In this way, it becomes possible to dissolve the strict differentiation between linguistics and materiality that has shaped crisis theory throughout the last decades. As has been accentuated in Barthes’ work, signs cannot be reduced to mere linguistics, text, or speech but they encompass a variety of entities such as text, speech, sound, gesture, visuality, social practices, and materiality (Barthes [1957] 1991, 108). However, referring to discourse as a system of signs might involve the risk of falling back on the dualist logic of signifieds and signifiers which is to be prevented. Instead, the foregoing semiotic developments allow us to redefine a notion of discourse based on the traditional terminology of signs, without clinging to the shortcomings of structuralist semiotics. Discourse then can initially be thought of as comprising a variety of entities, both linguistic and non-linguistic ones, that are invested with meaning. As every object, in a broad sense of the term, might potentially be invested with meaning, everything must be regarded as a discursive entity. It thus becomes impossible to demarcate a discursive from an extra-discursive realm, for we are always surrounded by discursive entities. In this sense, Laclau argues that this understanding of discourse “rejects the distinction between discursive and non-discursive practices” as “every object is constituted as an object of discourse, insofar as no object is given outside every discursive condition of emergence” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 107). Against this background, it becomes possible to introduce the concept of signifiers, yet without relying on its counterpart of signifieds. As it has been elaborated by Derrida, distinguishing between distinct realms of signifiers and signifieds would presume the existence of an external reality of signifieds which is not subjected to signification but remains possible without the presence of signifiers (Derrida [1967] 1997, 13). Thus, signifieds would be defined by their peculiarity of presenting some sort of transcendental truth instead of by their function of serving as an object of signification. However, when the transcendental character of signifieds cannot be upheld, both signifieds and signifiers must be reduced to their

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function, serving as the object of signification and its referent, respectively. In this sense, a signifier is defined as a discursive entity through its function of signification. As every entity is involved in processes of signification, every discursive entity must be regarded as a signifier. Discourse then does not merely comprise a variety of vaguely defined entities but, first and foremost, a variety of signifiers. Whereas the terminology of signifiers can be maintained by characterizing them through their function of signification, the concept of signifieds is dismissed as signifieds, in the traditional sense of the term, no longer act as the object of signification. Signifiers do not signify a distinct concept, as it has been proposed by Saussure, but they designate the infinity of meaning which emerges through the relation of potentially infinite signifiers. Thus, what has traditionally been denoted by signifieds must be understood through a system of signifiers that has two main characteristics: First, it is characterized by relationality as signifiers are infinitely related to other signifiers through differential relations. Second, what has traditionally been understood as signified emerges through the position of a particular signifier in this infinite net of signifiers. Thus, positionality denotes the position of a signifier within the infinite structure of signifiers and marks the location from which its differential relations proceed. The concept of signifieds as a distinct dimension must thus be abandoned, for signifieds merely denote the potential infinite meaning of a particular signifier. Instead of signifieds, I will hence simply speak of meaning, which can be qualified as infinite, if regarding the infinity of signifiers, or partial, if regarding the partial realm of concrete discourses. From this it follows that signification is not understood as the combination of signifier and signified, but signification is defined as the process of investing a signifier with a particular partial meaning. In this sense, signification becomes conterminous with Laclau’s notion of articulation and denotes a practice “which establishes between various positions [signifiers] a contingent, non-predetermined relation” (Laclau 1985, 32). Yet, signification does not comprise the entirety of potential differential relations but merely part of them, which, however, is necessary to achieve any meaning, even if it is necessarily a partial one. Importantly, the organization of these relations is contingent, that is, possible but not necessary, and therefore “external to the fragments [signifiers] themselves” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 93). Meaning then cannot be regarded as internal to any signifier but merely arises from processes of signification. In this way, it becomes possible to understand Laclau’s notion of articulation as “any

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practice establishing a relation among elements such that their identity is modified” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 105). In processes of signification, the infinity of potential relations, which proceed from a particular signifier, is pinned down to a limited number of relations which gives rise to a partial meaning. As soon as signifiers are rearticulated, however, their meaning becomes modified as different relations are adduced to specify a particular signifier. It now becomes possible to characterize discourse as a system of signs, as signs must be understood as the result of processes of signification. That is, signs are defined as signifiers that have been invested with a particular meaning. They arise from the infinitely related structure of signifiers from which a particular set of relations becomes accentuated, which makes it possible to invest signifiers with a particular meaning. In this sense, Laclau characterizes signs as emerging from the “relationship between elements in which each of the elements points towards the rest without this relationship being predetermined by the nature of any of them” (Laclau 1983b, 40). Discourse then stems from the infinite structure of signifiers and results from processes of signification or, as Laclau puts it, discourse must be understood as “the structural totality resulting from the articulatory practice” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 105). Thus, discourse is a particular meaningful structure, which, however, does not hold true for the system of signifiers. Within the latter, we are confronted with an infinity of meaning, or put differently, with an impossibility of complete meaning due to the infinite structure of signifiers. Laclau’s notion of the discursive circumscribes exactly this infinite system of signifiers. Referring to the discursive, he puts forward that discourse “exists only as a partial limitation of a ‘surplus of meaning’ which subverts it” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 111). That is, within the discursive, an infinity of signifiers exists which renders it impossible for them to become completely signified. Hence, the meaning signs acquire is necessarily partial and potentially subjected to processes of rearticulation, since the discursive always subverts particular discourses such that the latter never remain completely stable. Along these lines, Laclau argues that the discursive determines “the impossibility of any given discourse to implement a final suture” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 111). It is impossible then for discourses to be completely constituted since they remain an essentially precarious construct, even though within discourses, meaning appears to be relatively stable. In this sense, discourse functions

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according to Barthes’ concept of myth, for the contingent character of signifiers becomes disguised, as meaning is reduced to particular signs. Having scrutinized the precarious character of discourse, the notion of society must be problematized since society cannot be regarded as a static structure when every meaning remains essentially precarious. Instead, society must be understood as the attempt to arrest the contingent nature of signifiers, reducing them to a seemingly natural structure that has been invested with a particular meaning. However, as it remains impossible for any meaning to be completely constituted, society presents an “impossible object” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 112). Yet, this is not to say that society should be abandoned as an object of analysis, but it becomes necessary to account for its incomplete character. Nevertheless, the concept of society is unable to depict the precarious nature of discourses, which, however, is denoted by Laclau’s notion of the social. Whereas society feigns the possibility of being completely constituted, the social functions on the level of the discursive and designates the “infinite play of differences” (Laclau 1983b, 39) between the potential infinity of signifiers. Thus, it accounts for the precarious character of discourse, its permeable borders, and the contingent nature of signifiers. However, the social also encompasses the “attempt to limit that play, to domesticate infinitude, to embrace it within the finitude of order” (Laclau 1983a, 22). It is inevitable for the social to become manifest in attempts to constitute particular societies, for without any form of social order, no meaning would be possible at all. However, as society remains an essentially precarious structure, the social only exists as “the vain attempt to institute that impossible object” (Laclau 1983a, 24). Having laid down the discursive constitution of the social, it now becomes possible to engage in a systematization of dislocation that rests on the impossibility of complete constitution. It is precisely the latter that has been pointed out by scrutinizing the semiotic foundations of discourse theory, which provides the basis for Laclau’s understanding of discourse, and which is an essential aspect in theorizing dislocation as a permanent characteristic of the social.

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Notes 1. For an overview of poststructuralist semiotics, see (Bennington 2004; Culler 1982; Currie 2004; for similar perspectives in International Relations, see Der Derian and Shapiro 1989; Diez 1999; Doty 1996; George 1994; Milliken 1999; Nabers 2015). 2. Trump, Donald J. April 22, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”. This reference as well as references that are hereafter drawn from the corpus can be found in the Donald J. Trump White House Archive (White House 2021). 3. Trump, Donald J. March 11, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump in Address to the Nation”.

References Bennington, Geoffrey. 2004. “Saussure and Derrida.” In The Cambridge Companion to Saussure, edited by Carol Sanders, 186–204. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barthes, Roland. (1957) 1991. Mythologies. New York: The Noonday Press. Barthes, Roland. (1964) 1986. Elements of Semiology. New York: Hill and Wang. Barthes, Roland. (1970) 1992. Empire of Signs. New York: Hill and Wang. Culler, Jonathan. 1982. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. London: Routledge. Currie, Mark. 2004. Difference. London and New York: Routledge. Diez, Thomas. 1999. “Speaking ‘Europe’: The Politics of Integration Discourse.” Journal of European Public Policy 6 (4): 598–613. Derrida, Jacques. (1967) 1997. Of Grammatology. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Der Derian, James, and Michael J. Shapiro, eds. 1989. International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics. New York: Lexington Books. Doty, Roxanne Lynn. 1996. Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North-South Relations. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. George, Jim. 1994. Discourses of Global Politics: A Critical (Re)Introduction to International Relations. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Hjelmslev, Louis. (1943) 1969. Prolegomena to a Theory of Language. Madison and London: The University of Wisconsin Press. Laclau, Ernesto. 1983a. “The Impossibility of Society.” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 7 (1–2): 21–24. Laclau, Ernesto. 1983b. “Transformations of Advanced Industrial Societies and the Theory of the Subject.” In Rethinking Ideology: A Marxist Debate, edited by Sakari Hänninen and Leena Paldán, 39–44. Berlin: Argument.

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Laclau, Ernesto. 1985. “New Social Movements and the Plurality of the Social.” In New Social Movements and the State in Latin America, edited by David Slater, 27–42. Amsterdam: CEDLA. Laclau, Ernesto. 1989. “Politics and the Limits of Modernity.” Social Text (21): 63–82. Laclau, Ernesto. 1993. “Discourse.” In A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, edited by Robert E. Goodin, Philip Pettit, and Thomas Pogge, 541–47. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Laclau, Ernesto. 2012. “Afterword: Language, Discourse, and Rhetoric.” In Language, Ideology, and the Human: New Interventions, edited by Sanja Bahun and Dušan Radunovi´c, 237–46. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. (1985) 2001. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso. Milliken, Jennifer. 1999. “The Study of Discourse in International Relations: A Critique of Research and Methods.” European Journal of International Relations 5 (2): 225–54. Nabers, Dirk. 2015. A Poststructuralist Discourse Theory of Global Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Saussure, Ferdinand de. (1916) 1959. Course in General Linguistics. New York: Philosophical Library. White House. 2021. “News.” Accessed November 02, 2021. https://trumpwhit ehouse.archives.gov/news/.

CHAPTER 3

The Permanent Dimension of Dislocation

In IR theory, the concept of crisis has been approached from several perspectives which can be ascribed to three different dimensions that view crisis as an ephemeral occurrence, a recurring structural condition based on the existence of antagonistic relations, and a permanent constitutive feature of society. Following the assumption that these dimensions are not mutually exclusive but interconnected, it becomes necessary to establish the link between them which is rooted in what Martin Heidegger labeled ‘ontological difference’. Thereby, it is revealed how the temporal differentiation of permanent, recurring, and ephemeral crisis rests on an ontic-ontological differentiation. Against this background, a threefold framework of crisis can be established that distinguishes between a permanent ontological, a recurring ontic, and an ephemeral ontic dimension.

3.1

The Ontological Differentiation of Crisis

Heidegger introduces ontological difference as the distinction between being and Being (Heidegger [1927] 1982, 17), that is, between existing beings and their conditions of existence. Every discursive entity can be regarded as a being, ranging from human beings and material objects to more abstract entities such as social relations, language, or visuality. More precisely, what marks them as beings is their investment with a particular © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 N. Klopf, Global Crisis, Global Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25140-5_3

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meaning such that beings become conterminous with signs as articulated discursive entities. They are always invested with a particular meaning which, however, merely presents a fragment of the potential meaning they might acquire due to the infinity of the discursive. The latter then reflects the conditions of existence of particular beings and thus becomes conterminous with Being. It encompasses the potential infinite structure of signifiers which gives rise to particular signs. In this sense, beings must be understood as particular manifestations of the infinite realm of Being. In a similar fashion, Heidegger sketches the relation between being and Being. He emphasizes that being is inextricably linked to Being as every “being is always characterized by a specific constitution of [B]eing1 ” (Heidegger [1927] 1982, 78). Yet, being merely presents ‘a specific constitution’ of Being and can never reflect it entirely such that Being can only be encountered partially through particular beings. Thus, it becomes impossible to equate beings with Being, for “the constitution of the [B]eing of a being is not exhausted by the given way of being” (Heidegger [1927] 1982, 78), but Being remains as a potentially infinite structure beyond particular beings. It therefore presents an “excess that always already inhabits the being of human being” (Dillon 1998, 33). Being thus reflects the discursive, for it presents an excess or ‘surplus of meanings’, to put it in Laclauian terms, which subverts every discursive entity. Particular beings then cannot be scrutinized thoroughly without reference to Being, for “being always already finds itself within [ontological] difference because it arises as a manifestation of it” (Dillon 1996, 66). Even though beings remain essentially precarious constructs that are always haunted by an excess of Being, they become relatively stable for their meanings become naturalized. Thereby, their conditions of existence are limited to particular articulations, and potential alternative meanings vanish. The discursive is reduced to a particular discourse and the potential infinity of differential relations is pinned down to a given, seemingly natural, set of relations that give rise to one particular meaning. That is, the infinite character of Being becomes erased which, however, involves the risk of “falling into the metaphysical trap of representing it 1 Whereas Heidegger originally differentiates ‘Sein’ (Being) from ‘Seiendes’ (being), the common English translation only orthographically distinguishes between Being and being. However, as this translation translates both ‘Sein’ and ‘Seiendes’ as being, the former will be capitalized according to the conventional stylization in order to prevent confusion.

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as a being” (Dillon 1996, 24). In this vein, Michael Connolly proposes that every articulation is essentially ontopolitical since it “invokes a set of fundaments about necessities and possibilities of human being” (Connolly 1995, 1). It is therefore necessary to problematize how the meaning of every being, or every discursive entity, remains essentially contingent and open to contestation, for it can never acquire complete stability. Nevertheless, the discursive must become manifest in particular discourses for any meaning to be possible. In this sense, Michael Dillon concludes that being is “obliged to raise and respond to the question of its existence, without ever being in a position to answer it” (Dillon 1996, 38), that is, without being able to reflect Being entirely. Heidegger’s ontological difference thus allows us to specify crisis along an ontic-ontological dimension. First, crisis must be understood as a permanent constitutive feature of the social which denotes its impossibility of complete constitution. That is, due to the infinity of signifiers within the discursive, it remains impossible to constitute any meaning completely. In this sense, crisis entails a permanent ontological dimension as it is concerned with the conditions of existence of particular articulations, in which permanent dislocation becomes manifest. Second, an ontic dimension of crisis regards these manifestations, which must be subdivided on a recurring ontic and an ephemeral ontic dimension. Being located at the level of particular discourses, recurring ontic crises become visible through partial articulations. Because it remains impossible to constitute any meaning completely, we are left with recurringly deficient articulations whenever we attempt to reach stability and completion. Finally, constructions of temporary crises concern naturalized articulations which they seem to disrupt. Therefore, crisis also encompasses an ephemeral ontic dimension, denoting temporary challenges to particular discourses that can seemingly be resolved through crisis management or processes of institutionalization.

3.2

The Ambiguity of Dislocation

Already in Laclau, dislocation remains an ambiguous concept which is permeated with diverse theoretical influences that reflect its development throughout Laclau’s work. Even though it is possible to systematize the complexity of dislocation by specifying it along an ontic-ontological differentiation, this merely expresses an attempt of systematization that remains absent in Laclau’s texts. Therefore, it is not surprising that even

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scholars associated with the Essex School, which is concerned with the theoretical merits of Laclau’s work, founder on a similar ambiguity. Jacob Torfing presents perhaps the most prominent definition of dislocation, contending that “a stable hegemonic discourse becomes dislocated when it is confronted by new events that it cannot explain, represent, or in other ways domesticate” (Torfing 2005, 16). This suggests a narrow understanding of dislocation that restricts the latter to disruptive events that temporarily destabilize an otherwise relatively stable society. It is exactly this ephemeral dimension of dislocation that permeates much of Laclau’s reception. However, scrutinizing Torfing’s earlier work reveals that his notion of dislocation is in fact more complex and exceeds temporary disruptions. He makes clear that dislocation presents “a permanent phenomenon inasmuch as there is always something that resists symbolization and domestication” such that “dislocation continuously prevents the full structuration of the structure” (Torfing 1999, 149). In this sense, dislocation “is precisely this incompleteness, this lack of objectivity, that deprives the structure of its determining capacity” (Torfing 1999, 149). This leads Torfing to define dislocation as “the concept of the impossibility of structural determination” (Torfing 1999, 149) which corresponds to an ontological understanding of dislocation as the impossibility of complete constitution. However, Torfing remains vague in specifying as to what events exactly refer to. He seems to have a somewhat permanent account of eventness, stating that “[d]islocation is the traumatic event of ‘chaos’ and ‘crisis’ that ensures the incompleteness of the structure” (Torfing 1999, 149). This incompleteness is not an occasional occurrence but through the dislocatory effect of events, discourses remain permanently dislocated which renders it impossible for them to be completely constituted (Torfing 1999, 149). Hence, even though Torfing is widely cited to justify an ephemeral understanding of dislocatory events, he initially advances an ontological perspective. However, given his sparse theorization of events, Nabers rightly criticizes that “the very notion of ‘event’ is at least in need of further clarification in this context” (Nabers 2019, 271). Moreover, whereas the event of dislocation appears as a permanent condition in his early work, Torfing mostly omits ontological considerations in his later work while adhering to the eventness of dislocation. Dislocatory events now present constant recurring occurrences such that discourses are “constantly destabilized by dislocatory events that reveal

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the ultimately undecidable character of all social and political identities” (Sørensen and Torfing 2005, 206). It is only against such recurring events that discourses are marked by an incomplete structure, that is, by the impossibility of complete constitution (Sørensen and Torfing 2014, 119; Torfing et al. 2009, 288). However, this contradicts Torfing’s earlier account of dislocation where dislocation denotes the ontological concept of impossible determination and not merely the sum of dislocatory events that recurringly destabilize discursive structures. Moreover, at times, Torfing also omits this recurring character of dislocatory events and does not make explicit whether such events take place constantly or merely occasionally (Sørensen and Torfing 2007, 40; 2009, 48; Torfing 2005, 16; 2007, 115). Thereby, an ephemeral understanding of dislocation undermines an ontological dimension and Torfing’s initial theorization of dislocation becomes replaced by a simplified account of temporary dislocatory events. A similar ambiguity can be found in the work of other Essex School theorists. Jason Glynos, for instance, initially puts forward an account of ontological dislocation, contending that every discourse is characterized by a fundamental dislocation, that is, by an “impossibility of closure” (Glynos 2001, 195) which denotes the impossibility of every discourse to be completely constituted. However, this ontological dimension vanishes in his later work where he only refers to temporary moments of dislocation (Chang and Glynos 2011, 106; Glynos 2011, 378; Glynos and Voutyras 2016, 214). Similarly, Aletta Norval adduces dislocation almost exclusively to designate ephemeral disturbances as she repeatedly addresses temporary dislocations (Norval 1995, 33; 1999, 500), situations of dislocation (Norval 2000, 330; 2013, 164), and dislocatory events (Norval 2004, 143; Norval and Prasopoulou 2017, 642). This ephemeral understanding also becomes visible when she mentions dislocations of different intensities, suggesting that dislocatory events can disrupt discursive structures to different degrees (Norval 1997, 66; 2001, 183; 2008, 71). Although Norval at one point distinguishes between an ontological and ontic dimension of dislocation, her account of ontological dislocation remains centered on an ontic dimension as she specifies ontological dislocation as the complete absence of structure. In this sense, she contends that in a condition of complete dislocation no structure, and thus no meaning, would be present at all (Norval and Mijnssen 2009, 41). However, as discourses are always partially constituted, complete dislocation becomes impossible such that we would rather be confronted with

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different degrees of dislocation that designate different levels of structuration. It therefore must be noted critically that reducing ontological dislocation to an absence of structure simplifies its theoretical complexity since ontological dislocation does not circumscribe the complete absence of structure but the impossibility of its full constitution. The differentiation between an ontic and ontological dimension of dislocation is theorized more thoroughly in other works associated with the Essex School. David Howarth recognizes the conceptual ambiguity of dislocation in Laclau’s work and draws attention to “the need to disambiguate and refine the category of dislocation” (Howarth 2004a, 271). Therefore, he distinguishes an ontological understanding of dislocation that marks the indeterminate nature of discursive structures from an ontic dimension where this indetermination becomes visible in particular dislocatory events that cannot be represented within existing discursive structures (Howarth 2004a, 268; 2004b, 242). Howarth expands on this ontic-ontological differentiation in his co-authored work with Jason Glynos. They distinguish an ontological dimension that depicts the impossibility of complete constitution from an ontic dimension which becomes manifest in “moments in which the subject’s mode of being is disrupted by an experience that cannot be symbolized within and by the pre-existing means of discursive representation” (Glynos and Howarth 2007, 14). Although ontological dislocation prevents discourses from being completely constituted, this incompleteness generally remains obscured through sedimented discursive structures. It is only in temporary moments of dislocation that these structures become destabilized and the contingent nature of those social practices is revealed that have previously been taken for granted (Glynos and Howarth 2007, 104–5). However, it is critical to note that throughout his work, Howarth confines ontic dislocation to those rare occurrences when discursive structures become temporarily disrupted and ontological dislocation is rendered visible (Howarth 2010, 312; 2013, 161; Howarth and Griggs 2012, 309; 2015, 113). Moreover, he often omits ontological dislocation and merely makes reference to temporary moments of dislocation (Glynos and Howarth 2008, 164; Griggs and Howarth 2002, 102; Howarth and Stavrakakis 2000, 7) and dislocatory events (Griggs and Howarth 2004, 183; 2014, 286; Howarth 2014, 11; 2018, 385). Even though Howarth acknowledges that dislocatory events render visible the incomplete nature of discursive structures, he often does not address this incompleteness

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in terms of dislocation, but he confines dislocation to temporary disruptions. Thereby, dislocation is restricted to an ontic dimension which not only neglects ontological dislocation but also simplifies how dislocatory events might be conceptualized. Restricting ontic dislocation to ephemeral occurrences further implies that discourses remain otherwise stable structures even though their stability rests on naturalized social practices, norms, and institutions. However, if these naturalizations only hide that discourses are actually partially constituted, and thus inherently unstable, ontic dislocation cannot be reduced to occasional occurrences. Even though the incomplete character of discourses might be accentuated in particular moments, ontic dislocation must also be continuously present for discourses to be partially constituted. The permanent character of ontological dislocation alone cannot account for the continuously incomplete nature of discourses, but ontological dislocation must become manifest in recurring ontic dislocation that assures the continuous incompleteness of concrete discursive structures. In this sense, sedimented practices not only conceal ontological dislocation but also its manifestation in recurring ontic dislocation. Similar to Howarth, Yannis Stavrakakis proposes an ontic-ontological perspective on dislocation, but even though he stresses the incompleteness of every discursive structure, dislocation remains first and foremost an ephemeral occurrence. Stavrakakis incorporates insights from Lacanian psychoanalysis and approaches ontological dislocation in terms of the Lacanian real which operates at the level of the discursive and circumscribes those signifiers that exceed signification, that is, which are not articulated but remain as potentialities within the discursive (Glynos and Stavrakakis 2004, 206). In this sense, Stavrakakis argues that “social reality […] is always threatened by a radical exteriority which dislocates it” (Stavrakakis 1999, 67–8) since even though processes of institutionalization ensure that discourses are relatively stable structures, the real constantly lurks within the domain of the discursive (Stavrakakis 2018, 90). However, although Stavrakakis emphasizes the Lacanian real, an ontological dimension of dislocation remains undertheorized as it is the constant presence of the real which disrupts, or dislocates, the complete constitution of discourses (Stavrakakis 1997, 124; 1999, 70). In this sense, ontological dislocation merely designates some kind of permanent rupture that depicts “the constitutive inability of the symbolic [discourse] to represent the real” (Stavrakakis 2007, 74).

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Moreover, since the contingency of the discursive remains obscured through sedimented discursive structures, the disruptive effect of the real generally cannot be encountered. Therefore, Stavrakakis adduces an ontic dimension of dislocation which depicts those moments where previously sedimented structures become disrupted and we are confronted with the incompleteness of society. In this sense, ontic dislocation is defined as an “encounter with the real” (Stavrakakis 1998, 186). This understanding of ontic dislocation comes close to Howarth’s theorization of dislocatory events, and it founders on the same shortcomings since ontic dislocation is again restricted to occasional occurrences which do not account for the permanent instability of discourses. Furthermore, Stavrakakis has increasingly left aside discussions of ontological dislocation and often merely refers to dislocatory events (Stavrakakis 2017, 528; 2019, 201; Stavrakakis and Chrysoloras 2006, 150) and temporary dislocations (Andreadis and Stavrakakis 2018, 163; Salgado and Stavrakakis 2019, 3; Stavrakakis 2005, 248; Stavrakakis and Katsambekis 2019, 38). Therefore, the complex nature of dislocation is undermined by a simplified account of temporary dislocatory disruptions. Against the previous discussion of dislocation, it becomes clear that even though some scholars have attempted to formulate an onticontological differentiation of the term, they generally remain preoccupied with theorizing its ontic dimension while restricting the latter to occasional disruptions. In contrast to this emphasis on ontic dislocation, Oliver Marchart foregrounds that dislocation first and foremost presents an ontological category that depicts the “absence of ground” (Marchart 2003, 103) of every discourse, that is, the absence of complete determination such that every discourse is inherently dislocated which prevents its complete constitution (Critchley and Marchart 2004, 6). Marchart then introduces an ontic dimension of dislocation in which ontological dislocation becomes manifest. However, similar to previously discussed accounts of ontic dislocation, Marchart contends that ontic dislocation indicates “the moment where signification breaks down and the groundlessness of signification […] is experienced” (Marchart 2007, 28). That is, dislocatory events designate temporary ruptures that disrupt naturalized discursive structures which reveals that discourses are seized by ontological dislocation, that is, by the absence of determinate structures (Marchart 2004, 64). Marchart, nevertheless, reminds us that “dislocation as such functions in the first place as a negative limit concept, to

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indicate that there will never be such a thing as an entirely closed system or an eternally stable meaning structure” (Marchart 2007, 153, n5). Nonetheless, even though Marchart remains centered on an ontological dimension of dislocation, his conceptualization of ontic dislocation remains problematic. In contrast to previously discussed accounts of ontic dislocation, Marchart argues that dislocatory events do not present occasional occurrences, but discourses are continuously dislocated through dislocatory events that render discursive structures”constantly done and undone” (Marchart 2014, 279). That is, dislocatory events take place again and again such that discursive structures are rendered unstable through the recurring occurrence of ontic dislocations. Although this conceptualization does not confine ontic dislocation to occasional occurrences, it still does not comprise the complex nature of ontic dislocation. Resting on the problematic notion of dislocatory events, Marchart remains trapped in specifying ontic dislocation in terms of events that cannot be represented within existing discursive structures. However, while ontological dislocation can certainly become visible in particular occurrences, the manifestation of dislocation at an ontic level is not restricted to dislocatory events, but it first and foremost takes place in recurring processes of identification, accompanied by constructions of antagonistic relationships. Therefore, although several scholars provide important steps in systematizing dislocation along an ontic-ontological differentiation, they generally foreclose theorizations of ontological dislocation and founder on conceptualizing ontic dislocation more thoroughly by pushing the latter towards an ephemeral understanding of dislocatory events. 3.2.1

The Ambiguity of Dislocation in Poststructuralist Crisis Research

Nabers provides an exceptionally radical theorization of ontological dislocation even though some ambiguity remains present concerning its ontic dimension. However, instead of clarifying these conceptual issues, his reception is permeated with an even greater ambiguity. Nabers stresses in particular that ontological dislocation presents a constitutive feature of the social which cannot be reduced to temporary moments of disruption. Therefore, it becomes problematic that several scholars confine dislocation to disruptive events while relying on his approach. Budryte et al., for instance, argue that state identity becomes dislocated

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“[w]henever an event disrupts, questions, contradicts, or challenges the dominant biographical self-narrative of a state” (Budryte et al. 2020, 8). In this formulation, dislocation appears as the result of events that temporarily destabilize entrenched state identities, which assumes that identity remains relatively stable and only becomes disrupted occasionally. They continue that “[c]risis opens up opportunities for change because the state needs to reframe, and make-up [sic] for the dislocation of meaning it has experienced” (Budryte et al. 2020, 8). Here, crisis seems to be used in a manner somehow related to dislocatory events, but this relation is not further specified. Moreover, whereas Nabers emphasizes how dislocation renders society inherently precarious which requires ongoing efforts to stabilize the latter, Budryte et al. reduce his approach to linear responses of institutionalization that are made “[a]fter the crisis is articulated” (Budryte et al. 2020, 10). In a similar manner, Huss understands Nabers’ approach as a linear cycle, leading from dislocation to processes of institutionalization that attempt to mitigate the anticipated disruption of previously relatively stable identities (Huss 2018, 106). Wodrig also limits dislocation to its ephemeral dimension, contending that dislocation presents a disruptive event “that reveals the contingency of the dominant discourse and cannot be represented within this discourse” (Wodrig 2018, 71). Even though she rightly acknowledges that dislocatory events lay bare the contingent nature of every discourse, she nonetheless restricts dislocation to such temporary occurrences. Whereas these approaches demonstrate how dislocation is reduced to its ephemeral dimension despite Nabers’ emphasis on the permanent character of dislocation, different scholars acknowledge dislocation as an ontological feature of the social but still cling to an ambiguous use of dislocatory events. Buhari-Gulmez et al., for instance, claim to follow Nabers’ argument but address diverse ‘European crises’, including challenges to European integration, economy, and sovereignty (BuhariGulmez et al. 2020, 2). Thereby, crisis is not approached as an underlying ontological feature of the social, but the constitutive nature of crisis is restricted to the recurring occurrence of multiple crises, such that crises confront the European Union again and again in the form of ontic challenges. In a similar vein, Resende argues that crisis presents “a permanent feature of the social – and not a situation that happens sporadically and needs to be managed” (Resende 2019, 59), thus putting forward an ontological perspective on crisis. At the same time, however, she contends that crisis “signals those key moments where the temporalization of

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the present and the stability of social order are brought into question” (Resende 2019, 59). Here, crises are reduced to temporary moments that disrupt the naturalized social order, which is conceptually different from her first claim that crisis presents ‘a permanent feature of the social’. It is certainly correct that both dimensions are present within Nabers’ work. However, reciting them without any differentiation only fosters conceptual ambiguity. Moreover, Stengel claims that any “hegemonic project usually begins with the dislocation of an old order as a result of events that it literally cannot make sense of” (Stengel 2019, 303). Again, dislocation refers to the temporary disruption of social orders through disruptive events. However, at the same time, Stengel follows Nabers in the argument that “dislocation is an ontological feature of the social” only to continue that “discursive orders can be more or less disrupted at different times” (Stengel 2019, 303; n64; see also Stengel 2020, 36). This suggests a degree of disruption which points towards an understanding of dislocation beyond its ontological meaning since an ontological feature as such cannot possibly be divided into degrees. Instead, assessing different degrees of disruption would require an investigation of different ontic manifestations of ontological dislocation. Furthermore, whereas crisis and dislocation are mostly treated as somehow interchangeable, some authors distinguish them conceptually. Nymalm, for instance, follows Nabers in the assumption that “discourses and identities are never really fully constituted […] and thus inherently dislocated” (Nymalm 2020, 14). She relates this ontological understanding of dislocation to crisis, stating that “[o]n an ontological level they [discourses] are always already dislocated, which manifests itself at the ontical level through events experienced as ‘crises’” (Nymalm 2020, 54). Thereby, crises appear as the ontic manifestation of ontological dislocation. Interestingly, Nymalm conceptualizes these ontic crises on two dimensions: ephemeral events and antagonism. For her, ontological dislocation becomes manifest “through the experience of an ‘event’, or a confrontation with an Other, that cannot be integrated into the existing meaning system or reconciled with the thus far existing articulations of the Self” (Nymalm 2020, 58). Nymalm not only follows the conventional theorization of crisis events, but she also makes reference to the role of antagonism in challenging naturalized identities. While confrontations with an antagonistic other might be accentuated temporarily, antagonism first and foremost presents a recurring challenge to every discourse.

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Nymalm thus rightly acknowledges that identity “is always already dislocated – and not because of an encounter with the Other as something external. It is the encounter with the Other that ‘just’ renders the lack visible on an ontical level” (Nymalm 2020, 64). However, her differentiation between ontological dislocation and ontic crisis still raises the question whether it makes sense to draw the line between crisis and dislocation along an ontic-ontological differentiation. In fact, dislocation cannot be reduced to its ontological dimension, but already in Laclau it has a distinct ontic meaning which is neither comprised in ontological dislocation nor can it be reduced to its manifestation in antagonism. Therefore, dislocation presents both an ontological and ontic category and the line between dislocation and crisis cannot be drawn between these dimensions. Instead, crisis must be treated conterminously with dislocation, with both terms equally presenting multidimensional concepts. Wojczewski also differentiates between crisis and dislocation, contending that dislocation describes a situation “when particular phenomena or experiences cannot be represented or explained by a preexisting discourse” (Wojczewski 2020, 297). This dislocatory event “confronts the Self with its incomplete identity and is therefore typically experienced as a crisis” (Wojczewski 2020, 297). In this formulation, two aspects deserve particular attention: First, crisis merely appears as an experience of the self whereby it remains unclear what exactly such an experience refers to. Thus, it remains unexplained exactly how crisis might be conceptualized. Second, even though Wojczewski foregrounds the temporary character of dislocation, he accounts for the incompleteness of identity that dislocatory events render visible and thus points towards an ontological dimension of dislocation. However, instead of stressing ontological dislocation, he refers to the related concept of ontological lack to designate the absence of stable foundations that would be necessary to constitute complete identities (Wojczewski 2020, 297). Even though Wojczewski does not explicitly theorize dislocation at an ontological level, his treatment of lack points towards a similar direction. Nonetheless, it remains problematic how he theorizes the relation between lack, dislocation, and crisis. Lack remains the sole ontological category that is ontologically different from temporary ontic dislocations. However, although ontological lack is certainly related to dislocation, Wojczewski’s approach simplifies the complex relation between ontological lack and the multifaceted character of dislocation.

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Finally, Leek and Morozov explicitly distance themselves from Nabers in their approach to crisis and dislocation. They conceptualize crises as disruptive events that “cannot be immediately accommodated in the hegemonic articulation” (Leek and Morozov 2018, 123) and thus reveal the contingent character of every discourse. Moreover, crises temporarily disrupt an otherwise supposedly stable discourse, thus leading to the dislocation of hegemonic discourses (Leek and Morozov 2018, 123). Although Leek and Morozov acknowledge the unstable character of discourses, they initially confine dislocation to such ephemeral occurrences and only later account for the constitutively dislocated nature of society, arguing that “there is always dislocation inherent in any social order, regardless of how stable and sedimented it is” (Leek and Morozov 2018, 129). It is this ontological understanding of dislocation that they address when asserting that “dislocation becomes particularly visible at the moments of crisis” (Leek and Morozov 2018, 129), that is, in temporary disruptive events. Hence, dislocation is again approached on different dimensions even though Leek and Morozov do not systematically differentiate between an ontological understanding of dislocation and ephemeral dislocatory events. Against this background, their critique of Nabers’ theorization of dislocation can be considerably weakened as they remain conceptually tied to his approach. Leek and Morozov criticize Nabers for equating crisis with dislocation and argue that even though “some degree of dislocation is there at any moment […] the term ‘crisis’ must be reserved for situations where an event […] lays bare the contingent nature of norms and habits” (Leek and Morozov 2018, 130). However, as Nabers does not deny that disruptive events exist, confining the terminology of crisis to temporary disruptions is merely a matter of terminological dissent and does not present a conceptual departure from Nabers’ approach. Against this background, it now becomes necessary to systematize Nabers’ theorization of dislocation since he offers an intriguing perspective on crisis as dislocation which is fundamental for any genuine theoretical engagement with crisis. Although his approach still gives rise to theoretical questions, this must not be confused with theoretical incoherence. Rather, these points of critique are merely a result of the conceptual ambiguity that has already been present in Laclau’s work. Instead of rejecting Nabers’ theoretical advancements, his theory serves as the basis for further systematizations that reveal the complexity inherent in dislocation. Thus, delineating an ontological from an ontic dimension of

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dislocation will not only clear the way towards a more systematized approach to crisis, but what appears as inconsistencies in Nabers’ work will also be resolved.

3.3

The Development of Permanent Dislocation

The discursive character of the social provides the ontological starting point for theorizing crisis as a multidimensional concept, following the Laclauian notion of dislocation. While Laclau has already referred to a Marxist notion of dislocation in his early papers (Laclau 1980; Laclau and Mouffe 1981), the concept reappears in his co-authored monograph with Chantal Mouffe Hegemony and Socialist Strategy ([1985] 2001) where it, for the first time, acquires a more prominent position. However, despite Laclau’s frequent use of dislocation when discussing the Marxist tradition underlying his work, the term hardly plays any role in his subsequent theory of hegemony. Even though dislocation was conceptually tied to Althusserian Marxism and thematically linked to the development of capitalism in the beginning, considerable departures from this limited understanding can be observed since Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. It must be noted, however, that the dimensions of dislocation delineated here merely present an attempt of systematizing a concept that is riddled with ambiguity. While dislocation had initially been influenced by Althusserian Marxism and other Marxist figures, such as Leon Trotsky, Georgi Plekhanov, and Pavel Axelrod, Laclau increasingly expanded the concept by introducing Lacanian psychoanalysis. Yet, he has never succeeded in eradicating its conceptual ambiguity. Exploring the development of dislocation will therefore allow us to understand more thoroughly how three dimensions of dislocation can be crystallized in Laclau’s work. Importantly, engaging in an ontological perspective opens the way for understanding subsequent questions of ontic dislocation. A nuanced conceptualization of dislocation becomes essential for scrutinizing the complexity of crisis since an ontological perspective on dislocation serves as the “horizon from which all identity may be thought and constituted” (Laclau 1987, 333).

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The Real

Laclau’s essay on “Psychoanalysis and Marxism” (1987) marks the turning point towards an ontological perspective on dislocation. It is at this point that he introduces Lacanian psychoanalysis to expand his concept of dislocation which has initially been restricted to an ontic dimension. Importantly, this essay presents Laclau’s development towards a “generalization of the phenomena of the ‘unequal and combined development’2 […] into any social identity” (Laclau 1987, 333). Tracing this Lacanian line will render it possible to specify an ontological dimension of dislocation as the first step in every theorization of crisis. This ontological perspective takes as its starting point the aforementioned discursive character of the social. As has become clear, we are confronted with an essential impossibility to completely constitute any identity, which is, in Lacanian terms, composed “around a real/impossible kernel” (Laclau 1987, 331). Following Laclauian terminology, Lacan’s category of the real can be defined as that fraction of differential relations that exceeds signification, that is, which is not articulated in discourses but remains as a potentiality within the discursive. It is in this sense that the real points towards the impossibility to acquire completely constituted identities since complete constitution would require the articulation of an infinity of differential relations. There is always a potential meaning left behind, a certain ‘real’ fraction that cannot be signified. In this sense, identity becomes constituted around an ‘impossible kernel’ since identity can only be constituted precariously by articulating certain differential relations while excluding others. Stavrakakis addresses this real dimension of ontological dislocation when discussing the ‘ecological crisis’. Nature presents—as every discursive structure—an infinity of potential differential relations which cannot 2 Trotsky introduced the term ‘uneven and combined development’ to describe dynamics of human development in which national peculiarities of capitalism are seized by the capitalist world market. He first notices that the law of unevenness designates that capitalism “prepares and, in a certain sense, realizes the universality and permanence of man’s development” such that “a repetition of the forms of development by different nations is ruled out” (Trotsky [1930] 2008, 4). That is, depending on national circumstances, states are at different stages of capitalist development. Against this background, Trotsky then states that the law of combined development circumscribes the “drawing together of the different stages of the journey, a combining of the separate steps” (Trotsky [1930] 2008, 5). National development therefore also depends on the integration in the capitalist world market where states develop in combination with each other.

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be signified entirely in particular discourses. Nevertheless, “the unpredictability and severity of natural forces have forced people from time immemorial to attempt to understand and master them through processes of imaginary representation” (Stavrakakis 2000, 108). However, as representations of nature will always remain partial, these endeavors only present vain attempts to articulate the infinity of nature, seeking to master its unpredictable effects. As the “real of nature” (Stavrakakis 2000, 108) exceeds every signification, nature remains partially unrepresentable such that every articulation that attempts to master it will sooner or later become disrupted. Recently, this has become all too visible in our inability to grasp the ‘unpredictability and severity’ of diseases in the form of the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite efforts to acknowledge the severity, impact, and development of the pandemic, we remain unable to understand which effects it will have on social life, public health, and economic developments in the long term. However, this does not mean that we are at the mercy of an utterly uncontrollable pandemic, since even though our means of signification render it impossible to represent the forces of nature entirely, we nonetheless seek to represent them, even if these efforts remain partial. The devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic can therefore not only be ascribed to the unpredictability of nature, but how potential biohazards had been assessed before and how the Covid-19 pandemic has been constructed in the course of its development have considerably shaped its outcome. For instance, in spite of warnings by the United States Intelligence Community that “[t]he emergence of a severe global public health emergency is possible in any given year” because a “novel or reemerging microbe that is easily transmissible between humans […] has the potential to spread rapidly and kill millions” (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 2017, 14), Donald Trump significantly curtailed U.S. pandemic preparations prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. In May 2018, for example, he disbanded the Directorate of Global Health Security and Biodefense whose main responsibility lay with pandemic preparation, only to defend his negligence in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic as “you can never really think [a pandemic] is going to happen”.1 Furthermore, despite recurring warnings that “the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or largescale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability” (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 2019, 21), Trump continued

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to neglect the need to allocate personnel, commission sufficient medical supplies, and establish pandemic preparation plans. The ‘unpredictability and severity’ of the Covid-19 pandemic therefore not only stems from its inaccessible real fraction, but Trump marginalized preparatory measures that would already have revealed the United States’ vulnerability prior to the Covid-19 outbreak. 3.3.2

Hegemony

Even though the real already points towards an understanding of ontological dislocation in line with the impossibility of complete constitution, this conceptualization becomes even clearer when Laclau brings in Lacan’s notion of lack. Thereby, Laclau takes his theory of hegemony as a starting point, stating that hegemony takes place “in the field of a primary and insurmountable relationship of dislocation” (Laclau 1987, 333). Thus, dislocation presents the ontological prerequisite for hegemony. Although this explicit reference to the relation between ontological dislocation and hegemony remains an exception, Laclau points towards a similar direction when discussing hegemony at other points in his work. Already in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Laclau stresses that the constitutive incompletion of discourses serves as the precondition for hegemony since “[i]n a closed system of relational identities, in which the meaning of each moment is absolutely fixed, there is no place whatsoever for a hegemonic practice” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 134). In this sense, hegemony only presents “the attempt to effect this ultimately impossible fixation” (Laclau 1983, 22) by creating the illusion of completely constituted discourses. Laclau describes this move as the relation “by which a certain particular content overflows its own particularity and becomes the incarnation of the absent fullness of society” (Laclau 1995, 89). That is, a particular sign transcends its partial meaning and purports to represent the completion of a particular discourse. However, as particular signs are incapable of representing the infinity of potential relations within the discursive, which would be necessary for discourses to be completely constituted, they can always only create the illusion of completion. Nevertheless, these particularities are the only means we have to achieve any kind of stability, even if this is necessarily a partial one. Importantly, hegemony implies the possibility that the alleged completion of discourse can be articulated differently, which also means that hegemonic articulations are necessarily precarious and open to hegemonic struggles in

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which various particularities attempt to acquire the hegemonic role of representing the missing completion of society (Laclau 1993a, 283–85). This became visible during the Covid-19 pandemic as every illusion of an invulnerable society became crushed with the experience of overburdened healthcare systems, economic recessions, rising unemployment figures, and death tolls in the millions. Trump marginalized warnings of potential pandemics, prevented the establishment of preparatory measures, and suspended timely responses. However, this should not be completely surprising, given that the deliberate rejection of every sense of vulnerability is a simplified way to create the illusion of U.S. strength, preparedness, and superiority. Trump therefore attempted to keep this illusion intact, offering assurances that “[t]he virus will not have a chance against us” since “[n]o nation is more prepared or more resilient than the United States”.2 Nevertheless, no rearticulation of U.S. invulnerability can prevent the emergence of alternative discourses that contest Trump’s pandemic policies and the way he constructs the American society, demonstrating that any hegemonic discourse remains precarious and can always be articulated differently. 3.3.3

Ontological Lack

Laclau further states that hegemony not only presupposes ontological dislocation but it “can be thought only by assuming the category of lack as a point of departure” (Laclau 1987, 333), that is, the missing completion of constitution. By introducing the Lacanian notion of lack, Laclau considerably extends the scope of dislocation and makes it possible to define what exactly the ontological dimension of dislocation refers to. While Laclau, at this point, restricts lack to subjects that lack any predetermined ‘signified’ (Laclau 1987, 333), that is, any essential meaning, this theorization could well be expanded. Instead of limiting lack to subjects, any entity must be considered since every entity equally presents a differential position within a discursive structure, that is, it serves as an equal signifier among others. Although, at this point, Laclau does not expand on theorizing dislocation and its relation to lack, Lacan’s notion of lack becomes essential for systematizing dislocation. Torfing, for instance, argues that discursive structures are marked by a “lack of objectivity” (Torfing 1999, 149), that is, by the absence of essential foundations, as ontological dislocation prevents discourses from becoming completely constituted. Similarly, Howarth and Glynos stress

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that subjects are “marked by a constitutive lack or, to put it differently, by an identity which is impossible to fully suture” (Glynos and Howarth 2007, 129). In this sense, lack denotes the absence of complete constitution since it is exactly this complete constitution or complete suture that is lacking. However, Howarth at times conflates this ontological notion of lack with ontological dislocation by equating lack with dislocation (Glynos and Howarth 2007, 110; Howarth 2002, 266; 2010, 312). This undermines the theoretical differentiation between lack and dislocation since both terms merely come to designate the impossibility of complete constitution. This blurred line between lack and dislocation also becomes apparent when Howarth contends that it is the fundamental lack of discursive structures which becomes visible in moments of ontic dislocation or temporary dislocatory events (Glynos and Howarth 2007, 129, 2008, 162; Howarth 2013, 161). Although dislocatory events serve as the ontic manifestation of ontological dislocation, what is revealed in these temporary moments, then, is not ontological dislocation as such but rather the ontological category of lack. Even though Howarth’s argument is certainly valid, he refrains from further specifying the relation between lack and ontological dislocation, which leaves their relation unclear. Finally, whereas Howarth stresses the ontological character of lack, Stavrakakis takes a different perspective and relates dislocatory events to an ontic understanding of lack. He argues that dislocatory events produce lacks of meaning as sedimented structures become disrupted and it becomes uncertain how the dislocatory event is to be handled. It is at this point that politics sets in since these lacks of meaning must be filled with concrete contents for discourses to regain an illusion of completion (Stavrakakis 1997, 124; 1999, 68; 2000, 106). Even though some scholars acknowledge the relation between lack and dislocation, they generally do not differentiate that lack acquires two distinct notions in Lacan’s work: lack of being and lack of having. While lack of being designates the ontological dimension of dislocation, lack of having will become fruitful when engaging in an ontic perspective. Although this differentiation is fundamental for a thorough understanding of dislocation, already Laclau remains vague in his references to these dimensions of Lacanian lack. The same ambiguity that is inherent in the concept of dislocation also haunts the category of lack, which can be eliminated by considering the conceptual differences in lack, and, subsequently, in dislocation. Thus, it becomes necessary to recall Lacan’s notion of lack. At an ontological level, lack “is the lack

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of being properly speaking. It isn’t the lack of this or that, but lack of being whereby the being exists. This lack is beyond anything which can represent it” (Lacan [1954–1955] 1991, 223). Hence, lack of being does not regard a certain missing object, for it is not a lack of an ontic objectivity, but it denotes the ontological lack of acquiring complete constitution. That is, what is lacking is the foundation necessary for essentially grounding the meaning of any signifier, but since the discursive remains infinite, such a foundation is impossible and we are instead confronted with the impossibility of complete constitution, that is, with ontological dislocation. Against this background, it can be concluded that the ontological lack of being can be defined as the absence of stable foundations that would enable the complete constitution of meaning. Because of this originary lack, any identity is essentially precarious and remains open to change. It is in this sense that Lacan’s remark can be understood that due to the lack of being “every being […] could not be at all, or could be other” (Lacan [1960] 2002, 559). Since it is impossible to completely constitute the meaning of any signifier, the constitution of every entity acts as a partial limitation of the infinite discursive, with the effect that every entity could be constituted differently, that is, it ‘could be other’, or could cease to be part of existing discourses, that is, it ‘could not be at all’.3

3.4

A Definition of Permanent Dislocation

While it has become clear how the Lacanian notion of ontological lack, or lack of being, relates to the impossibility of complete constitution, the category of ontological dislocation requires further specification. Tracing dislocation etymologically leads us towards a promising direction as originating from Latin ‘dislocare’, the prefix dis- refers to a negation, i.e., the absence of a specific location. That is, literally, dislocation describes the non-existence of localization, which in our case means that meaning cannot be ultimately localized in a distinct spatial position within discursive structures. Instead, due to the infinity of the discursive, we are confronted with the impossibility of fixing meaning completely. In this sense, permanent dislocation is defined as the impossibility of complete constitution. It must be seen as a constitutive structural feature of the social, pointing towards the incompleteness of every identity, the failure of society to achieve stability, and thereby also towards the ongoing disruption that prevents any identity from being completely constituted

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or stable. However, this disruption is not a momentary condition but a constitutive underlying feature of every society. 3.4.1

Permanent Dislocation in Laclau’s Theory

Even though Laclau first introduces an ontological dimension of dislocation in “Psychoanalysis and Marxism”, he already hints at the impossibility of complete constitution in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy through his notion of subversion. Subversion designates the “presence of the contingent in the necessary” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 100) which renders any essential, or necessary, meaning impossible. Thereby, Laclau specifies necessity as a “system of differential positions in a sutured space” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 100), that is, as a completely constituted discourse in which meaning is ultimately fixed. However, this sutured space, or completely constituted discourse, can only be a construction that is constantly called into question by the infinite character of the discursive which subverts it. It is in this sense that subversion already points towards an ontological understanding of dislocation since the discursive designates “the impossibility of any given discourse to implement a final suture” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 98). Moreover, Laclau points towards this impossibility when discussing antagonism in two interviews that were conducted prior to the publication of New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (1990a). He argues that antagonism possesses a revelatory function as it shows “the ultimate impossibility of social objectivity” (Laclau [1988] 1990, 180; 1990b, 211), since the presence of antagonistic forces prevents any discourse from being completely constituted and confronts us with this incompletion of our identity. In a similar vein, Laclau also regards antagonism as “the witness of the ultimate impossibility of society” (Laclau 1988, 256). However, in being the ‘witness’ of this ultimate impossibility, antagonism presupposes the latter which leads us to an ontological understanding of dislocation. Hence, even though Laclau does not explicitly mention dislocation when discussing antagonism in relation to the impossibility of complete constitution, he already hints at an ontological dimension of dislocation. Laclau finally expands on dislocation as “the primary ontological level of the constitution of the social” (Laclau 1990a, 44) in his monograph New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. While an ontic dimension of dislocation remains predominant, which is not surprising, considering

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the far-reaching theoretical consequences of an ontic perspective, for the first time, he addresses an ontological dimension more thoroughly. In line with the above-mentioned conceptualization of permanent dislocation, Laclau links dislocation to “the impossibility of constituting the structure as such” (Laclau 1990a, 41) and defines it as the failure of social structures “to achieve constitution” (Laclau 1990a, 47). It is in this sense that permanent dislocation is linked to the constitutive incompletion that marks every discursive structure, which has been circumscribed by the ontological dimension of the Lacanian lack. If discourses were completely constituted, and thus reconciled, they would no longer be dislocated and we would arrive at a paradise—or tyranny—of complete meaning (Laclau 1990a, 75). Following this argument, it becomes clear that dislocation involves a permanent dimension that denotes the impossibility of complete constitution of any discourse, and consequently of any identity. A similar ontological approach appears occasionally in Laclau’s later work as he contends that “[t]he primary terrain of constitution of democracy is not one of fully acquired identities, but of the failure in constituting them. Consequently, the primary terrain of democracy is that of an original dislocation” (Laclau 1993b, 227). Hence, dislocation appears as a permanent characteristic of the social that prevents the constitution of complete identity. Laclau also reiterates that every identity is “penetrated by a constitutive lack” (Laclau 1992, 89), that is, a lack of being in the Lacanian sense, insofar as any “differential identity has failed in its process of constitution” (Laclau 1992, 89). In a similar vein, Laclau argues that discursive structures are characterized by a constitutive lack, that is, by an “absent fullness” (Laclau 1993a, 287) or failure of constitution. Yet, even though he links this “constitutive incompletion” (Laclau 1993a, 293) with the dislocated nature of identity, Laclau does not further specify the relation between ontological lack and dislocation—neither in his previous work nor in these later passages. However, Laclau touches upon this relation in The Making of Political Identities (1994b) where he links dislocation to the “radical lack” (Laclau 1994a, 2) that threatens every identity. He advances the concept of identification in contrast to completely constituted identities which rests on an ontological understanding of lack as “one needs to identify with something because there is an originary and insurmountable lack of identity” (Laclau 1994a, 3). That is, what is lacking is a completely determined identity such that we are destined to identify with particular discursive

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positions in the vain search for acquiring complete constitution. Yet, even though these particularities might be invested with the illusionary fullness of identity, they remain essentially inadequate to represent complete constitution. A similar approach towards ontological lack and identification can also be found in Laclau’s essay on “Power and Representation” (1993a) even though an explicit reference to dislocation remains absent. He argues that the constitutive character of ontological lack renders complete identities impossible such that we are left with recurring identifications which “are thinkable only as a result of the lack within the structure” (Laclau 1993a, 285). The relation between ontological lack and dislocation is finally touched upon again in “On the Names of God” (1997) where Laclau contends that an ontological lack renders impossible the complete constitution of any identity such that we are condemned to recurring acts of identification in the vain search for completion (Laclau 1997, 249). However, Laclau’s theorization of dislocation and its relation to lack again remains cursory as he has never exhausted the conceptual depth of Lacanian lack, or at least this exhaustion remains obscured behind ambiguous and implicit arguments. 3.4.2

Summary

Having scrutinized Laclau’s approaches towards an ontological understanding of dislocation, it can clearly be crystallized that permanent ontological dislocation must be understood as the impossibility of complete constitution. It thereby denotes a constitutive feature of the social that must not be conflated with any kind of ephemeral disruption. Laclau makes this clear when stating that “[t]here is dislocation […] not as a result of an empirical imperfection but of something which is inscribed in the very logic of any structure” (Laclau 1996, 56) such that every discourse, and every identity, is constitutively and permanently dislocated. Three theoretical concepts supplement this specification of permanent dislocation: (1) Ontological lack. Because the realm of signifiers is infinite, that is, because we cannot find a limit of potential meaningful entities, it is impossible to determine foundations on which meaning could be constituted once and for all. The concept of ontological lack denotes this absence of stable foundations that would be necessary for the complete constitution of meaning. It is thus closely related to

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permanent dislocation as the latter designates the characteristic of complete constitution being impossible. (2) The real. This also means that meaning is necessarily partial because we cannot articulate the infinity of signifiers, which would be necessary to constitute meaning completely. In acts of articulation, meaning is always restricted to a limited set of differential relations that bring about a particular constitution of meaning. Put in Laclauian terminology, the Lacanian concept of the real describes that fraction of differential relations that exceeds signification, that is, which is not articulated in particular discourses but remains as a potentiality within the infinite realm of the discursive. This bears close relation to the concept of permanent dislocation, because the impossibility to constitute meaning completely implies that a certain fraction of differential relations remains unarticulated within the discursive. (3) Hegemony. Although every meaning is essentially partial, stability and completion are nonetheless sought to be attained. Hegemony describes such endeavors when a particular, partial, signifier acquires the function of representing the absent completion of a discourse, or society. The signifier is universalized, leaves its contingent traces behind, and appears as relatively stable. However, as permanent dislocation remains constitutive, hegemony is always contestable and might crumble in hegemonic struggles, when the current hegemonic articulation is contested and potentially replaced. Permanent dislocation is hence the precondition for hegemony to emerge, but it also makes every hegemonic construction subject to transformation. It now becomes possible to approach crisis as a permanent ontological characteristic of the social. Following Nabers, any conceptual differentiation between dislocation and crisis is abandoned, such that crisis becomes conterminous with dislocation. Both concepts are then equally conceptualized along three dimensions. Thereby, the systematization of crisis follows the ontic-ontological differentiation of dislocation which makes it possible to develop a three-dimensional crisis framework that distinguishes between permanent ontological, recurring ontic, and ephemeral ontic crisis. Theorizing dislocation at an ontological level makes clear that crisis does not merely circumscribe temporary disturbances but first and foremost presents a permanent characteristic of every discourse that

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denotes its impossibility of complete constitution. This follows Nabers’ argument that crisis must be understood as a constitutive feature of the social such that discourses remain essentially crisis-ridden. Along these lines, Nabers rightly argues that “crisis is related to the constantly disrupted structure of society or even the very impossibility of society” (Nabers 2019, 265) and cannot merely be considered to be a momentary condition, disrupting an otherwise relatively stable structure. Hence, crisis presents a permanent ontological feature of every discourse that prevents society from being completely constituted.

Notes 1. Trump, Donald J. March 7, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump After Tour of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention”. 2. Trump, Donald J. March 11, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump in Address to the Nation”. 3. In the field of International Relations, Jakub Eberle (2019) and Ty Solomon (2015) provide excellent discussions on the role of lack from a psychoanalytical and discourse theoretical perspective.

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CHAPTER 4

The Recurring Dimension of Dislocation

As permanent dislocation denotes the impossibility of complete constitution, it cannot be represented as such, but it must become manifest in particular ontic instantiations. Laclau therefore states that “there is no common measure between the dislocation and the forms of its discursive ‘spatialization’” (Laclau 1990b, 66). Accordingly, the concept of dislocation must be split up into two distinct dimensions: First, dislocation serves as a constitutive ontological feature of the social, denoting the impossibility of complete constitution. Second, as this ontological characteristic cannot be encountered directly, it must be put in spatial terms by establishing certain differential relations to become represented at an ontic level. Although this ontic-ontological differentiation remains rather implicit throughout Laclau’s work, he makes it explicit when approving of Howarth’s differentiation between an ontological and ontic dimension of dislocation, agreeing that “this double dimension is very much present and that between both of them there is a close interconnection” (Laclau 2004, 323).

4.1

The Development of Recurring Dislocation

Laclau makes clear that “the dislocated structure cannot provide the principle of its transformation” and is thus open to diverse “possibilities and indeterminate rearticulations” (Laclau 1990b, 42–43). However, this © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 N. Klopf, Global Crisis, Global Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25140-5_4

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does not mean that ontological dislocation can become manifest in any way since we are always confronted with partially structured discourses, which renders possible certain instantiations of ontological dislocation and marginalizes others (Laclau 1990b, 43). Importantly, it must not be assumed that it would be possible to articulate, not even partially, ontological dislocation since it designates the impossibility of complete constitution and eludes every articulation. In this sense, Laclau maintains that “its representation becomes impossible” (Laclau 1990b, 75). Marchart arrives at a similar conclusion when maintaining that ontological dislocation “does not have a location of its own within the spatial order”, that is, within discourses, but “it is spatially unrepresentable” (Marchart 2003, 110). Instead, we encounter ontological dislocation in social struggles, shifting meanings, and antagonistic relations. Laclau leads us in a fruitful direction when he defines antagonism “as a witness of the impossibility of a final suture” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 112), and this impossibility refers exactly to what is encompassed by permanent dislocation as the impossibility of complete constitution. In this sense, antagonism serves as the starting point for conceptualizing ontic dislocation since antagonism presupposes permanent dislocation and is linked to its ontic realization. 4.1.1

Radical and Ontic Antagonism

As has been pointed out, discourses cannot be approached as stable discursive structures, but their constitution is precarious as they remain open to alternative potential articulations. The constitution of discourses, nonetheless, comprises the limitation of certain differential relations and their presentation as relatively stable. Thereby, limits towards an outside are established that demarcate an allegedly stable discursive inside from an excluded outside. In this sense, Laclau presents antagonism as the limit of any discursive structure, since what lies beyond its limits is an antagonistic camp that does not merely act as another differential position but represents what is negated in a certain discourse (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 112). In order to understand these conceptual nuances more thoroughly, it is fruitful to proceed along the critique raised by Slavoj Žižek (1990) regarding Laclau’s conceptualization of antagonism. Laclau first considers antagonism more thoroughly in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy where he relates antagonism to the subversion of every discourse by the infinite character of the discursive. He investigates “the

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way in which this subversion is discursively constructed” which requires “to determine the forms assumed by the presence of the antagonistic as such” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 113). Whereas subversion circumscribes the ontological limit of any discourse, antagonism can be understood as depicting its ontic realization. However, even though subversion shows itself through the establishment of antagonistic frontiers, particular antagonistic camps cannot equally represent the radical limit of particular discourses as this would require the representation of an infinity of potential differential relations that are not articulated in a particular discourse. This must be kept in mind when Laclau identifies antagonism as the negation of a particular discourse since this negation will always be partial and open to potential rearticulations (Laclau 1985, 35). Even though it is the constitutively incomplete character of the discursive which prevents complete constitution, this incompletion is projected onto the presence of antagonistic others who allegedly prevent discourses from acquiring completion. However, this projection is inevitable since every articulation involves a limitation of the infinity of differential relations. Against this background, Žižek suggests that antagonism cannot be reduced to the ontic phenomenon of antagonistic camps that confront any discourse, but instead we must start thinking from a “radical dimension of social antagonism, that is to say, the traumatic kernel the symbolization of which always fails” (Žižek 1990, 251). This leads us to the aforementioned specification of permanent dislocation as the impossibility of complete constitution, and more precisely, to the Lacanian notion of the real as that which cannot be signified due to the infinity of the discursive. However, in highlighting this ‘radical dimension’ of antagonism, Žižek does not deny Laclau’s initial conceptualization, but he instead crystallizes two dimensions of antagonism that remain interwoven in Laclau’s work. Thus, Žižek’s brief critique of Laclauian antagonism reflects the same ontic-ontological differentiation that guides our systemization of dislocation. Therefore, it becomes necessary to “distinguish the experience of antagonism in its radical form, as a limit of the social, as the impossibility around which the social field is structured, from antagonism as the relation between antagonistic subject-positions: in Lacanian terms, we must distinguish antagonism as real from the social reality of the antagonistic fight” (Žižek 1990, 253). In linking ‘radical’ antagonism with ‘the impossibility around which the social field is structured’, that is,

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with permanent dislocation, we arrive at the point where dislocation can be thought in relation to antagonism. Furthermore, against Žižek’s Lacanian perspective, it becomes possible to put the relation between the ontological categories of dislocation, antagonism, lack, and the real in clear terms. While these concepts certainly revolve around the same ontological issues, they must be differentiated. As it has been scrutinized, the real is that which cannot be signified due to the infinity of the discursive, leading to an ontological lack of stable foundations as complete constitution cannot be achieved. In other words, as there remains something that eludes every signification, ontological lack is inevitable. In contrast, radical antagonism can be defined as the infinity of potential differential relations that are not part of a specific articulation. It does not merely consist of existing antagonistic camps that have been articulated, but it reaches into the potential infinity of the discursive. However, radical antagonism must not be conflated with the real since the real operates exclusively within the discursive and presents that fraction of differential relations that is not part of any articulation whereas radical antagonism proceeds from a specific discourse and encompasses those differential positions that are not part of one particular articulation. Radical antagonism and the real thus differ conceptually in terms of scope and positionality. It now becomes possible to grasp more thoroughly why the establishment of antagonistic relations prevents any discourse from reaching the point of complete constitution, that is, why the mere existence of an antagonistic other cancels out the possibility of full constitution. However, this argument requires a clear differentiation between a radical and an ontic dimension of antagonism. Thought radically, antagonism encompasses the infinity of potential relations that are not actualized in a specific articulation. In this sense, it can be specified as pure negativity or the radical negation of a certain signifier, as the infinity of differential relations escapes every signification. In other words, the articulation of radical antagonism is impossible since we will never reach the point of articulating the infinity of the discursive. Radical antagonism therefore remains as a radical negativity, as an unsignified infinity which cannot be put in positive terms. Laclau also points towards the possibility that antagonism entails an ontological dimension beyond the presence of antagonistic camps when he equates antagonism with the Lacanian real (Laclau 1990a, 168). He thereby asserts the radical negativity of antagonism since the real cannot be reduced to particular antagonistic discourses

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but implies the non-signification of antagonism. This also becomes visible when Laclau, at another point, equates the Lacanian real with the negativity “that limits and distorts the ‘objective’” (Laclau [1988] 1990, 185), that is, particular discourses. Hence, as radical antagonism is principally infinite, it cannot be articulated as such, but we only encounter certain ontic instances of radical antagonism in specific antagonistic relations. Every ontic antagonism is thus merely a fraction of an underlying radical dimension. Antagonism has acquired an increasingly prominent radical dimension since the publication of New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time where Laclau takes Žižek’s critique into consideration. In New Reflections, he thus specifies antagonism as “the limit of all objectivity” since it “does not have an objective meaning, but is that which prevents the constitution of objectivity itself” (Laclau 1990b, 17). Thereby, antagonism is not approached as a particular antagonistic camp, but Laclau understands antagonism more radically as it represents the radical negation of a particular discourse. This becomes even clearer when Laclau argues that through antagonism “it is not my identity which is expressed, but the impossibility of its constitution” (Laclau 1990b, 18), and it is precisely this impossibility which he would later in his book specify as ontological dislocation. It is in this radical sense that Laclau contends that “the possession of a full identity would presuppose the entirely sutured objectivity of the latter, that is its necessary character. But this is precisely what the antagonizing force deprives it of” (Laclau 1990b, 27). Antagonism then does not merely present the ontic realization of subversion, which projects the impossibility of complete constitution onto particular antagonistic discourses, but antagonism itself acquires a radical dimension. Laclau refers more explicitly to an ontic-radical differentiation of antagonism in Contingency, Hegemony, Universality (Butler et al. 2000) where he argues that a particular antagonistic discourse comes to represent “the obstacle which prevents society from coinciding with itself, from reaching its fullness” (Laclau 2000, 55). However, “[t]here is no concept, of course, which would correspond to that fullness and, as a result, no concept corresponding to a universal object blocking it” (Laclau 2000, 55). He continues that, nevertheless, “an impossible object, to which no concept corresponds, can still have a name: it borrows it from the particularity of the oppressive regime – which thus becomes partially

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universalized” (Laclau 2000, 55). Hence, Laclau’s account of antagonism finally operates within Žižek’s critique as he acknowledges that antagonistic discourses cannot directly present the radical negation of a particular discourse. They merely acquire the function of representing this radical negation, even though they remain essentially inadequate to do so. However, again, since it is impossible to represent the infinity of differential relations within the discursive, particular antagonistic discourses are the only means of presenting any form of negation. Against this background, it becomes clear that whenever antagonistic frontiers are established, discourses are presented as particular entities whose only source of instability lies in the presence of concrete antagonistic forces. In this sense, ontic antagonism circumscribes the negation of a seemingly stable identity that is projected onto a particular discourse. At an ontic level, antagonistic relations are established between specific discursive positions. In this way, antagonism no longer expresses the radical negation of a signifier but its originary negativity is put in positive terms. As Žižek maintains, “in an antagonistic fight with the external adversary […] all the positivity, all the consistency of our position lies in the negation of the adversary’s position and vice versa” (Žižek 1990, 252). This last remark is crucial. While an antagonistic other certainly acts as the negation of our own identity, the other is not a radical one, such that it would comprise the infinity of potential relations. Instead, when assuming a certain, relatively stable, identity as the starting point for antagonistic relations, the other is merely another, equally limited and partial, discursive position. In this way, it becomes possible to assert certain attributes to an antagonistic other, limiting it, just as ourselves, to a concrete, relatively stable identity. This also becomes clear when Laclau argues that antagonism operates “in a world that is divided between two opposed camps, two paratactic successions of opposed equivalences” (Laclau 1988, 256). That is, the antagonistic other does not negate a particular discourse in toto but it equally presents a particular set of differential relations. For instance, while we could construct a discourse around signifiers such as democracy, freedom, and equality, a line would necessarily be drawn between us and a non-democratic and unfree other that does not advocate equality. However, a radical negation of such a discourse would also include an infinity of alternative potential articulations and not merely the negation of certain characteristics. The partial character of ontic antagonism becomes particularly visible when Laclau

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discusses the possibility of multiple antagonistic forces. He argues that if more than one antagonistic other opposes a particular discourse, e.g., if a minority is threatened both by the regime and foreign invaders, these antagonistic forces are subsumed under one antagonistic threat, since “[t]he national minority will see all the antagonistic forces as equivalent threats to its own identity” (Laclau 1992, 133). That is, “through all the very different antagonistic forces something equally present in all of them is expressed” (Laclau 1992, 133) which is the threat to the identity in question. It is in this sense that ontic antagonism negates identity since antagonistic others are constructed as opposing a particular identity, as preventing its complete constitution through their mere presence. Each antagonistic other serves as the representation of a radical negation, but it necessarily remains partial and inadequate to negate any identity completely. What unites different antagonistic forces is their common characteristic of incorporating the illusion of radical negation. Against this background, it becomes visible that ontic antagonisms merely function as particular manifestations of a more radical dimension of antagonism. Thus, even though an antagonistic other could be attempted to be eliminated, radical antagonism remains, and its ontic realization will merely be displaced to another antagonistic relation. As Žižek rightly asserts, it is an “illusion […] that after the eventual annihilation of the antagonistic enemy, I will finally abolish the antagonism and arrive at an identity with myself” (Žižek 1990, 251). The elimination of an antagonistic other in an endeavor to complete one’s identity is destined to remain illusionary, since “to grasp the notion of antagonism in its most radical dimension, we should invert the relationship between the two terms: it is not the external enemy who is preventing me from achieving identity with myself, but every identity is already in itself blocked, marked by an impossibility, and the external enemy is simply the small piece, the rest of reality upon which we ‘project’ or ‘externalize’ this intrinsic, immanent impossibility” (Žižek 1990, 251–52). It is at this point that an ontic perspective on antagonism and ontological dislocation converge, as any identity is ‘marked by an impossibility’ which is precisely the impossibility of complete constitution denoted by ontological dislocation. In this sense, “the negativity of the other which is preventing me from achieving my full identity with myself is just an externalization of my own auto-negativity, of my self-hindering” (Žižek 1990, 252–53), that is, of the impossible completion of my own identity. That is to say,

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even though radical antagonism is negativity as such, it assumes positivity by this externalization, by becoming “the positive embodiment” (Žižek 1990, 253) of my own impossible identity. Whenever an antagonistic other would finally be eradicated, we would not succeed in acquiring a complete, positive identity. As the constitution of every identity requires the establishment of antagonistic limits, it is impossible to cancel out antagonism without altering one’s identity at the same time. Thus, the elimination of one antagonistic other would merely lead to the establishment of different antagonistic relations, leaving us eternally trapped in this vicious circle. As Žižek aptly puts it, “it is precisely in the moment when we achieve victory over the enemy in the antagonistic struggle in social reality that we experience the antagonism in its most radical dimension, as a self-hindrance: far from enabling us finally to achieve full identity with ourselves, the moment of victory is the moment of the greatest loss” (Žižek 1990, 252). Whenever a certain antagonism vanishes, we lose our desired identity and are thrown into a void in need of re-identification with yet another discursive position, threatened by yet another antagonistic other. In this way, antagonistic relations are merely displaced, and we encounter radical antagonism in our failed attempts to eliminate the antagonistic other, when we are thrown back to a void of identity instead of its completion. 4.1.2

Identification and Ontic Lack

Against this conceptualization of antagonism, it becomes possible to advance towards an ontic understanding of dislocation. While permanent dislocation becomes visible in the establishment of antagonistic relations, we have not yet explored how dislocation as such can be approached on an ontic dimension. Laclau briefly summarizes that, at an ontic level, “dislocation […] stems from the presence of antagonistic forces” (Laclau 1990b, 40). This statement can only be understood thoroughly when paying attention to the ontic-ontological differentiation inherent in both dislocation and antagonism. While it has been scrutinized how antagonism must be approached as the manifestation of ontological dislocation, antagonism can also be specified as a prerequisite for ontic dislocation. However, in order to understand the relation between antagonism and ontic dislocation more thoroughly, a comprehensive engagement with ontic dislocation becomes necessary.

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As has been pointed out, every identity is necessarily incomplete due to the impossibility of complete constitution, which does not mean, however, that we would encounter every signifier in all its precariousness. Instead, every constitution of identity must be viewed as an attempt to acquire stability, or in more Lacanian terms, to fill the ontological lack of being. That is, every signifier desires the completion of its identity despite this being impossible. It is exactly this impossibility that is denoted by ontological dislocation and rendered visible through ontic instances of antagonistic relations. The desire of every entity to succeed in its complete constitution further allows us to advance towards an ontic understanding of dislocation since antagonistic others introduce a concrete ontic lack into every identity, or more precisely, into every process of identification. Since the potential infinity of the discursive prevents complete constitution, the completion of identity remains impossible such that identity merely serves as an illusionary horizon, as the impossible object of the complete constitution. Thus, instead of being confronted with fullyfledged identities, we encounter processes of identification as attempts to eventually attain an identity, that is, completion. In this way, identification gains primacy over identity as the latter is merely the unattainable result of identification.1 Meaning is only constituted in articulatory processes that tie together certain differential relations. Thereby, relatively stable signs are established as distinct positions within a discursive structure. In this sense, in processes of identification, identity is attempted to be secured by identifying with certain discursive positions (Laclau and Zac 1994, 14–15). However, as signs only comprise a limited amount of differential relations, every discursive position is necessarily “a particular object which assumes the role of bringing about a fullness incommensurable with itself (Laclau 2004, 300). Processes of identification can therefore never succeed in acquiring complete identity; they remain incomplete due to the constitutive character of permanent dislocation. This is designated by the presence of antagonistic others who introduce a certain lack into every identification which seemingly prevents an identity from being completely constituted and stable. Yet, this lack must not be confused with an ontological lack of being. Instead, we are dealing with a concrete ontic lack, related to the Lacanian lack of having. In contrast to an ontological lack which cannot be overcome, an ontic lack of having can be resolved, since what is lacking is not the radical ontological completion of identity but an illusionary one which merely attempts to close the lack teared open by

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an antagonistic other. In this sense, the ontic lack of having can be defined as the absence of particular discursive objects due to the presence of antagonistic others that prevent discourses from acquiring the illusion of complete constitution. Thus, ontic lack refers to missing objects such as perfect health or invulnerability which are supposedly threatened by the presence of antagonistic camps. This has become visible during the Covid-19 pandemic as Trump not only located the origin of the virus in China but through repeated references to the “Chinese virus”,2 China appeared as the locus of the ongoing disruption of U.S. sedimented structures even though the virus had long been spread within the United States. In this sense, Trump claimed to “marshal every resource at America’s disposal in the fight against the Chinese virus”3 in a war-like rhetoric, putting China in the crosshairs of his antagonistic construction. The Covid-19 outbreak in China was therefore presented as continuously threatening U.S. invulnerability and stability, although Trump’s own policies hindered sufficient responses to the pandemic. Moreover, as permanent dislocation prevents any society from acquiring stability, this inherent destabilization cannot be reduced to the Covid-19 pandemic, but it persists over any kind of ephemeral disruption. Hence, shifting the locus of U.S. instability to China merely presents an externalization of the United States’ inherent incompletion, its permanent dislocation. 4.1.3

Demands

Whereas ontological lack is closely related to the desire for complete constitution, ontic lack is concerned with concrete demands that only target an illusionary completion. Importantly, antagonistic relations not only introduce a certain ontic lack into every seemingly stable identity, but they also give rise to certain unfulfilled demands which require the filling of these lacks, that is, the alleged completion of identity. Along these lines, Lacan’s statement can be understood that a lack of having is “engendered by any particular or global frustration of demand” (Lacan [1958] 1982, 91). When concrete demands are attempted to be fulfilled, it becomes necessary to eliminate their alleged origin which would eventually lead to a stable identity. Therefore, those antagonistic relations must be dissolved that are accused of preventing stability, that is, the complete constitution of identity. In a radical sense, the termination of antagonistic relations would lead to endeavors to eradicate the antagonistic

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other in order to eliminate a threatening outside altogether. However, when approached less radically, the antagonistic frontier might merely be displaced to different antagonistic others when demands are not sought to be fulfilled by annihilating their antagonistic origin but by displacing them to other impossible objects. Thereby, we would encounter a reidentification with a certain object that is supposed to fill the ontic lack. Yet, even in the most radical attempt of dissolving an antagonistic other, we would never reach the point of its disappearance since radical antagonism remains constitutive for any identity. Instead, we would again only arrive at the re-identification with another impossible object since any attempt to fill an ontic lack remains ultimately futile. While a certain ontic lack can be resolved, the experience of an ontic lack is merely displaced to other ontic lacks as an ontological lack permeates every process of identification. While concrete demands can be fulfilled, the impossibility to satisfy the desire for complete constitution leaves us eternally caught in the vicious circle of recurring demands. This could be encountered during the Covid-19 pandemic as Trump accentuated antagonistic relations that has long existed towards China. He blamed China for its mismanagement of the pandemic, claiming that “[t]he world is now suffering as a result of the malfeasance of the Chinese government”.4 Trump also exacerbated dormant trade tensions by imposing tariffs on Chinese imports, transforming China into a major antagonist that “ripped off the United States like no one has ever done before”.5 The antagonistic construction of China therefore exceeded its involvement in the Covid-19 pandemic and included accusations that “China raided our factories, offshored our jobs, gutted our industries, stole our intellectual property, and violated their commitments under the World Trade Organization”.6 This clearly shows that China has again been constructed as generally threatening the U.S. beyond the Covid-19 pandemic, concerning aspects such as economic and military strength as well as economic and political independence. However, even if demands could be fulfilled to restrict Chinese influence on the U.S. economy or counter its relative military growth, the United States would not gain completion, but whereas concrete lacks can be alleviated, the desire for completion cannot be achieved and would again become manifest in ever-new ontic lacks and respective demands. While it has been explored how, at an ontic level, antagonism must be approached in relation to lack and unfulfilled demands, the position

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of ontic dislocation so far has remained in the dark. While Laclau highlights that demands are an ontic instance of ontological dislocation when contending that “unfulfilled demands are the expression of systemic dislocation” (Laclau 2005, 118), his references regarding the relation between ontic dislocation and demands remain scarce. At one point, he argues that myths of completion suture the permanently incomplete nature of discourses whereby they transform particular dislocations into demands (Laclau 1990b, 81–82). Thereby, myths function as “the means of expression by which specific dislocations might be overcome” (Laclau 1990b, 63). However, even though Laclau establishes some link between dislocation and demands, it remains unclear how exactly ‘specific dislocations’ might be specified. Moreover, he simplifies the relation between dislocation and demands, omitting any notion of lack. The relation between dislocation and demand can only be understood thoroughly when taking ontic lacks into consideration since demands do not directly arise from ‘specific dislocations’ but rather from the lacks that they give rise to. It is not dislocation as such which is thought to be sutured through the creation of myths, but dislocation induces particular lacks into processes of identification, and it is these lacks which demand to be sutured, i.e., filled by new identifications that supposedly lead to complete constitution. Some scholars also relate demands to ontic dislocation but restrict the latter to temporary ruptures of otherwise relatively stable discourses. Both Howarth and Marchart, for instance, argue that dislocatory events disrupt naturalized practices which provokes demands to re-suture these ontic lacks torn open by dislocation (Howarth and Griggs 2012, 327; Marchart 2012, 233–34). These demands might not only be directed against any filling object, but when dissatisfaction with previously hegemonic discourses prevails, dislocatory events in particular might provoke policy changes that disturb the status quo (Griggs and Howarth 2014, 297). However, even though it is certainly correct that the disruption of sedimented discursive structures engenders demands to regain stability, theorizing ontic dislocation merely in terms of temporary dislocatory events simplifies the theoretical complexity inherent in ontic dislocation. Therefore, it becomes necessary to conceptualize ontic dislocation not simply as ephemeral ruptures but also as a recurring characteristic of the social. It is the recurring dimension of ontic dislocation that we need to scrutinize first. Only against this background can we finally understand the peculiarity of ephemeral ontic dislocations, or so-called dislocatory events.

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A Definition of Recurring Dislocation

Since it is impossible to determine the missing object that would bring about a desired identity, any filling object remains insufficient to complete one’s identity. As identification can never succeed in attaining identity by identifying with a certain object, the bond between a discursive position and its object of identification always remains precarious. It is this always inadequate relation between a particular discursive position and its object of identification that recurring ontic dislocation refers to. A discursive position is essentially disjointed from its object of identification, i.e., no signifier bears a natural relation to those objects it is identified with. Recurring dislocation must then be defined as the incompleteness of articulatory processes that appears in form of recurring attempts to secure an identity through acts of identification. It thus presents a constitutive structural characteristic of the social, which shows itself in processes of articulation that take place constantly whenever we take part in society. The recurring dimension of dislocation becomes visible, for instance, in Trump’s recurring identifications of the United States with economic strength and preparedness. Regardless of how this proclaimed identity is reproduced, it will never be stable but always remains open to contestation and rearticulation. We could witness this during the Covid-19 pandemic as the United States’ identification with economic strength and preparedness has been disrupted, given the devastating effects of the pandemic in the United States. It, therefore, became all too visible that these identifications were merely illusionary and subject to destabilization. This shows how recurring dislocation is inherent in every articulatory act and, moreover, how permanent dislocation renders any articulation incomplete in the first place. While a certain instance of recurring dislocation can seemingly be resolved by filling its related ontic lack, that is, by eliminating the respective antagonistic other, ontic lacks will reappear and are merely displaced to another antagonistic other. Thus, even if Trump holds China responsible for the ongoing disruptions in the United States and imposes travel restrictions that prevent Chinese citizens from entering the country, the United States will not regain its desired stability, but it will be constantly seized by precarious identifications that remain incapable of ensuring permanent stability. We can thus encounter multiple instances of recurring dislocation, as dislocation recurs as a necessary ontic characteristic of the social. However, we are not always directly confronted with recurring

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dislocation, but it vanishes behind the alleged stability of identifications. Only in times when identities, which have previously thought to be stable, seem to be destabilized, recurring dislocation becomes visible as the supposedly stable bond between discursive positions and their objects of identification becomes disrupted. In such ephemeral moments of destabilization, the precariousness of every identity, or process of identification, becomes visible, even though this instability has always already been there. It is in this sense that the temporary character of so-called dislocatory events can be understood which, however, must not be conflated with a recurring dimension of dislocation. 4.2.1

Recurring Dislocation in Laclau’s Theory

It is this understanding of recurring dislocation as the incompleteness of articulatory processes that can be crystallized in Laclau’s work. In his early engagement with dislocation, Marxist thinkers such as Leon Trotsky, Georgi Plekhanov, Pavel Axelrod, Vladimir Lenin, and particularly Louis Althusser served as Laclau’s major references. It is therefore not surprising that his theorization of dislocation was initially thematically tied to capitalist developments. These early texts, however, paved the way towards an advanced understanding of recurring dislocation in his later work. Laclau’s first remarks on dislocation emerged from his discussion of Althusserian displacement which therefore must be taken into consideration. Drawing on Louis Althusser’s differentiation between periods of relative stability and revolutions, Laclau already addresses displacement in Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory ([1977] 2011b). He argues that “in periods of stability, when the social formation tends to reproduce its relations following traditional channels and succeeds in neutralizing its contradictions by displacements, this is when the dominant bloc in the formation is able to absorb most of the contradictions and its ideological discourse tends to rest more on the purely implicit mechanisms of its unity” (Laclau [1977] 2011a, 102–3). Laclau adopts this statement from Ben Brewster’s glossary to Althusser’s monograph For Marx ([1965] 1985). Brewster mentions that “in periods of stability the essential contradictions of the social formation are neutralized by displacement; in a revolutionary situation, however, they may condense or fuse into a revolutionary rupture” (Brewster 1985, 250). Since Laclau’s use of displacement is borrowed from Althusser, it is necessary to scrutinize Laclau’s statement with recourse to Althusser’s

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terminology to get a grasp on what is at stake when Laclau speaks of displacement. First, displacements only appear ‘in periods of stability’ that he later in his essay distinguishes from periods of crisis, which reminds of Althusser’s differentiation between times of relative stability and revolutions. Whereas in periods of stability, “the social formation tends to reproduce its relations following traditional channels” (Laclau [1977] 2011a, 102), in periods of crisis the “confidence in the ‘natural’ or ‘automatic’ reproduction of the system” is lost, a “dissolution of the unity of the dominant ideological discourse” takes place, and “a new ideological unity” is attempted to be established (Laclau [1977] 2011a, 103). This is reminiscent of Althusser’s remarks that in times of revolution, the ideological unity of capitalism dissolves which renders possible alternative ways of organizing society (Althusser [1965] 1985, 211). Moreover, in periods of stability, society “succeeds in neutralizing its contradictions by displacements” which Laclau specifies as the ability of the hegemonic discourse “to absorb most of the contradictions” (Laclau [1977] 2011a, 102). Here, contradiction appears as one of the key terms in Althusser’s terminology and serves as the basis for theorizing displacements. According to Althusser, “there is always one principal contradiction and secondary ones, but they exchange their roles in the structure articulated in dominance while this latter remains stable” (Althusser [1965] 1985, 211). Althusser thus acknowledges the plurality of existing contradictions within social structures, but he emphasizes that one contradiction exists which serves as the principal organizing characteristic of society. However, stability is not maintained through the suppression of alternative contradictions by the hegemonic contradiction. Instead, processes of displacement assure stability by integrating alternative contradictions as differential positions within the hegemonic discourse. Through displacements, it thus becomes possible to ‘absorb’ contradictions without them contesting the role of the hegemonic contradiction. It is in this sense that Althusser’s remark must be understood that “if the structure in dominance remains constant, the disposition of the roles within it changes: the principal contradiction becomes a secondary one, a secondary contradiction takes its place, the principal aspect becomes a secondary one, the secondary aspect becomes the principal one” (Althusser [1965] 1985, 211). This passage might give rise to misunderstandings since Althusser’s notion of principal contradiction does not merely regard the hegemonic contradiction that serves as the principal

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organizer of a particular discourse, but he also addresses potential principal contradictions that might emerge within that discourse. Therefore, it is essential that displacement only take place ‘if the structure in dominance remains constant’, that is, if the hegemonic contradiction is not contested in its hegemonic position. Against this background, Althusser’s definition of displacement must be scrutinized. When he argues that in processes of displacement, “the principal contradiction becomes a secondary one, a secondary contradiction takes its place” (Althusser [1965] 1985, 211), it becomes clear that displacement marks the alteration in the relations between dominant and subordinated contradictions. However, this does not mean that any of these contradictions emerges as an alternative principal contradiction that contests the existing hegemonic discourse. Instead, the alteration of principal and secondary contradictions assures that within hegemonic structures no alternative contradiction arises that permanently acquires the function of a principal contradiction that would be able to contest the hegemonic discourse. In this way, recurring processes of displacement render it possible that discourses remain relatively stable since multiple contradictions can coexist without the hegemonic discourse being threatened by contradictions that strive to implement an alternative organization of society. This also means that, instead of being confronted in antagonistic relationships, contradictions are merely marked by logical inconsistency. In this sense, Laclau continues his initial statement that contradictions are neutralized by displacements, stating that “this is when, generally, the correlation between the logical consistency of the elements of the discourse and its ideological unity reaches its lowest point” (Laclau [1977] 2011a, 103). He illustrates this with the contradiction of religious and worldly interpellations, since “religious interpellations of an ascetic type can, for example, coexist with an increasing enjoyment of worldly goods without the social agents ‘living’ them as incompatible” (Laclau [1977] 2011a, 103). The simultaneity of religious and worldly interpellations might be logically inconsistent, but they coexist within a society without being confronted in an antagonistic relationship. Laclau makes clear that “by unity we must not necessarily understand logical consistency – on the contrary, the ideological unity of a discourse is perfectly compatible with a wide margin of logical inconsistency” (Laclau [1977] 2011a, 102). Neutralization then emphasizes the aspect that neither religious nor worldly interpellations acquire a hegemonic function, but their principal role is constantly displaced, rendering possible their coexistence as differential

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positions within the same discourse. This also becomes clear when Laclau continues his example, adding that “the incompatibility between religious asceticism and enjoyment of material wealth, formerly masked by the dominant ideological discourse, erupts in all its sharpness during a crisis period” (Laclau [1977] 2011a, 103). Thereby, antagonistic frontiers are established, the religious interpellation acquires a hegemonic position, and “the coexistence of various relatively consistent interpellations in an ideological discourse has given way to an ideological structure in which one interpellation becomes the main organizer of all the others” (Laclau [1977] 2011a, 104). Following this argument, it becomes visible that Laclau’s use of displacement denotes that contradictions are integrated as differential positions within society which renders possible the coexistence of various non-antagonistic contradictions. Following this notion of displacement, Laclau addresses a recurring dimension of dislocation for the first time when discussing a Leninist perspective on the Russian Revolution. He explains that “Lenin no longer conceives of the revolutionary rupture as a necessary and predetermined point in the unfolding of a single contradiction, but as a specific critical conjuncture, dominated by a displacement in the relation of forces between classes” (Laclau and Mouffe 1981, 18). Laclau thus follows Lenin in his critique that capitalist development must not be understood as a unilinear succession of stages. At the same time, he adduces an Althusserian notion of displacement that stresses the shifting relations of domination and subordination between classes as a prerequisite for revolution. However, Lenin’s argument is more complex and does not solely encompass displaced relations between classes. It relies on an understanding of “the world capitalist system as an imperialist chain, whose weakest links – those in which revolutionary rupture is possible – do not necessarily coincide with those in which the contradiction between productive forces and relations of production has reached its highest point” (Laclau and Mouffe 1981, 18). Thus, shifts in the relation of forces between classes appear “in those national economic and political structures which, from the stagiest point of view, should not yet have been ripe for revolution” (Laclau and Mouffe 1981, 18). Instead of being confronted with a unilinear development of capitalism, we encounter an ‘uneven and combined development’ that calls those accounts of capitalism into question that argue for a synchronic development of successive stages. It is at this point that Laclau brings in the notion of dislocation, mentioning a “dislocation in the relation of forces” (Laclau and Mouffe

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1981, 19). Likewise, in his earlier paper, Laclau notes that “any crisis which arises in one point of this [capitalist] chain affects its other links, through a dislocation of the balance of forces between the classes, which might precipitate a revolutionary advance even before the objective conditions have matured from the point of view of a stagiest logic” (Laclau 1980, 135). Even though Laclau does not explicitly mention Althusser, the latter probably provided the basis for Laclau’s argument since Laclau’s use of dislocation and Althusser’s notion of the term are strikingly similar. Following Althusser, social formations, which are made up of economic, political, and ideological practices, do not develop in a unilinear trajectory, but each level is characterized by its own temporality. Thus, instead of being confronted with a unilinear reading of capitalism, Althusser advocates a multilinear trajectory. The relations between these levels, or practices, are relations of dislocation. Which circumscribes their noncorresponding time of development (Althusser and Balibar [1965] 1970, 124–25). Additionally, not only are the levels of social formations dislocated with respect to each other, but also the elements within each level can be dislocated, which Laclau emphasizes when describing how the “relation of forces between classes” do not necessarily correspond to the “outcome of the relation between productive forces and relations of production” (Laclau and Mouffe 1981, 18). However, at this point, it must also be viewed critically how Althusser’s original French notion of ‘décalage’ is translated into the English ‘dislocation’ which implies some sort of local disunity or discrepancy, whereas the original French ‘décalage’ highlights a temporal dimension. Thus, Étienne Balibar’s specification of dislocation as ‘disjointedness’ or ‘out-of-jointedness’ (Balibar 2015, 7) might better depict the temporal character of dislocation which is prevalent at this point in Laclau’s work. Laclau refers to dislocation again more explicitly in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy when addressing the emergence of hegemony during the development of Russian capitalism which was accompanied by the “structural dislocation between actors and democratic tasks” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, XII). Dislocation here acquires its distinct recurring meaning as it designates that “the limits of an insufficiently developed bourgeois civilization forced the working class to come out of itself and to take on tasks that were not its own” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 48–49). In this argumentation, Laclau relies on Georgi Plekhanov’s and Pavel Axelrod’s early theorizations of Russian capitalism who introduced

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the term hegemony to “describe the process whereby the impotence of the Russian bourgeoisie to carry out its ‘normal’ struggle for political liberty forced the working class to intervene decisively to achieve it” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 49). From this perspective, hegemony then denoted “the new type of relationship between the working class and the alien tasks it had to assume” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 50). Against this background, a split could be observed “between the class nature of the task and the historical agent carrying it out” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 49). It is this split that Laclau circumscribes with “historical dislocations” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 49), and which provides the basis for systematizing a recurring dimension of dislocation beyond the Russian Revolution. Along these lines, Laclau also brings in the categories of displacement, dissociation, and disharmony which describe different aspects of dislocation. Even though these terms can certainly be differentiated, they merely depict different sides of the same coin. (1) Displacement. Presumably following a similar Althusserian notion of displacement as in Politics and Ideology, Laclau mentions possible displacements between levels, which are, in an Althusserian tradition, the levels of economy, politics, and ideology, that can acquire a more dominant or subordinate position. At the same time, Laclau notes that displacements can also occur between classes, which, following Althusser, would suggest that their relations of domination and subordination change (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 49). (2) Dissociation. Laclau mentions as a second category the “dissociation of the structural moments of a synchronic paradigm” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 49) which possibly refers to the unilinear development of capitalism that Althusser criticizes in defense of a staggered approach where synchronic structural moments are dissociated into a multilinear trajectory. That is, a formerly assumed synchronic development of different economic, political, and ideological practices becomes dissociated into a multilinear perspective that highlights their uneven development that takes place in different temporalities (Althusser and Balibar [1965] 1970, 124). In a similar manner, Laclau also contrasts the ‘uneven and combined development’, which pays attention to multilinear trajectories, with the classist economist assumption of successive

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stages of development. In this manner, Laclau’s repeated recourse to a “dislocation of stages” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 63) must be understood since the latter now “coexist in the same historical conjuncture” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 55). (3) Disharmony. Lastly, Laclau emphasizes the “disharmony between bourgeois tasks and the bourgeoisie’s capacity to carry them out” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 49), that is, a disharmony between “tasks and agential capacities” (Nabers 2017, 421). As it has been elaborated, this argument is based on the assumption that the bourgeoisie was unable to achieve its own tasks during the Russian Revolution, so that the working class exceeded its agential capacities and took on bourgeois tasks. Whereas Laclau advances the concepts of dislocation and displacement during his work, dissociation and disharmony remain tied to capitalist developments and hardly play any role in Laclau’s subsequent theory such that any genuine approach to these concepts would require a thorough rethinking beyond Marxist categories. Already in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Laclau departs from a strictly Althusserian notion of displacement, arguing that any antagonistic frontier that marks the precarious limits of society is “essentially ambiguous and unstable, subject to constant displacements” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 134). Although this does not seem to be contrary to an Althusserian understanding of the term, it nonetheless implies a wider notion of displacement. Laclau no longer merely regards displaced principal or subordinated contradictions, but antagonistic frontiers as such become the object of displacement. Laclau then continues to address an Althusserian notion of dislocation in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy when discussing social democracy after the First World War. Even though he remains conceptually tied to an Althusserian understanding of the term, he adduces dislocation beyond capitalist developments during the Russian Revolution, which can be seen as a first step in rethinking a recurring dimension of dislocation. Laclau observes a “dislocation between strictly class tasks and the new political tasks of the [labor] movement” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 72). He again addresses the disjointedness, or disharmony, of tasks and agential capacities, contending that “the limited list of demands and proposals coming forth from the labour movement” did not correspond to the “diversity and complexity of the political problems confronted by a social

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democracy thrown into power as a result of the post-war crisis” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 72). That is, due to the limited classist perspective of socio-democratic parties, they were unable to hegemonize the “broad range of democratic demands” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 72) that exceeded strict class demands. Thus, dislocation again points towards the non-correspondence of tasks and agential capacities. Laclau departs slightly from this perspective when illustrating that “a trade union or a religious community might take on organizational functions in a community, which go beyond the traditional practices ascribed to them, and which are combated and resisted by opposing forces” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 141–42). Following Laclau, this presents a “moment of dislocation” that “we have witnessed […] from the very emergence of the concept [of hegemony] in Russian Social Democracy, under the form of the exteriority of class identity to the hegemonic tasks” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 142). This last remark is crucial since it renders visible what has already been implied in Laclau’s previous account of dislocation. The recurring dimension of dislocation does not merely encompass the non-correspondence between class identities and specific tasks, but it also entails the constitutive exteriority of these tasks. In more general terms, recurring dislocation does not merely entail the non-correspondence between certain discursive positions, such as classes, and their objects of identification, such as tasks, but it also marks the constitutive exteriority of these objects. That is, recurring dislocation denotes the necessarily inadequate relation between discursive positions and the objects they are identified with. This move from class tasks to objects of identification is justified insofar as the construction of class identities was based on the position of classes in the capitalist relations of production, that is, on the specific tasks that were ascribed to them according to the logic of capitalist development. In this way, specific tasks served as the object that produced class identities in the first place (Laclau 2006, 674). However, in the course of capitalist developments, this supposedly natural relation between classes and respective tasks became increasingly questioned, the exteriority of the tasks that classes were supposed to carry out became visible, and strict class identities dissolved. It is in this sense that Laclau mentions that in the “deepening of the democratic process” (Laclau 1987, 33), traditional relations of production under capitalism have become dissolved, and thus “more and more social identities are threatened and dislocated” (Laclau 1987, 33).

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The exteriority of class tasks also becomes visible when Laclau contends that dislocations “obliged the agents of socialist change – fundamentally the working class – to assume democratic tasks which had not been foreseen in the classical strategy” (Laclau and Mouffe [1987] 1990, 120). Dislocation here does not merely designate the specific noncorrespondence between the working class and democratic tasks, but this non-correspondence only emerged from a primary dislocation, that is, from the general disjointedness, or disharmony, between any discursive position and its object of identification. It is only because every object will be constitutively inadequate to reach complete identity that the working class was able to transcend its strict class identity by carrying out alternative tasks. Laclau finally points towards a more general theorization of recurring dislocation in New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, arguing that “a permanent dislocation exists between the representative and the represented” (Laclau 1990b, 39), that is, between a signifier and the content it is said to signify, or as it has been put before, between a discursive position and its object of identification. This broadened understanding of recurring dislocation also reappears in Laclau’s later work where he contends that recurring dislocations “show themselves as the distance between the unachievable fullness and what actually exists” (Laclau 2004, 287), that is, as the distance between the infinity of signifiers and the partiality of particular signs, which is reflected in the always inadequate relation of signifiers and the contents they are supposed to signify. 4.2.2

Summary

It now becomes possible to approach ontic dislocation as a recurring characteristic of the social, which points towards the always inadequate relation between discursive positions and the objects of identification that are adduced to reach an allegedly complete identity. Recurring dislocation hence denotes the incompleteness of articulatory processes that appears in form of recurring attempts to secure an identity through acts of identification. When leaving the terrain of identifications, this can be put in even more general terms since what recurring dislocation designates is the fundamental non-correspondence, or disharmony, between signifiers and their ‘signifieds’, that is, the contents they are supposed to signify. The latter will always be partial as every meaning merely comprises a fraction of the infinity of differential relations that exist within the discursive.

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It is this precarious relation that Laclau’s theorization of identification emerges from, and which builds the basis for theorizing recurring dislocation as the incompleteness of identificatory processes. However, as it makes no conceptual difference whether we approach recurring dislocation with recourse to futile processes of identification in search for complete identity, or as futile processes of signification in search for complete meaning, recurring dislocation can generally be defined as the incompleteness of articulatory processes that appears in form of recurring attempts to secure meaning through acts of signification. This broadened understanding of recurring dislocation is essential and becomes clear in the following example: (1) Incompleteness of identification. Recurring dislocation circumscribes the incompleteness of identificatory processes, for instance, when identifying the United States with concepts such as freedom, democracy, healthcare excellence, and economic superiority. It must be clear that any identification of the United States remains partial, precarious, and contestable, as complete and stable identities remain an illusion due to the constitutive character of permanent dislocation. (2) Incompleteness of signification. It is not only impossible to fix the identity of the United States, but the meaning of freedom, democracy, healthcare excellence, and economic superiority is itself an outcome of partial acts of signification and therefore subject to contestation. Hence, as the constitutive nature of permanent dislocation renders it impossible to establish stable meanings as to what democracy or freedom entails, we are confronted with an essentially inadequate relation, or disharmony, between any signifier and its object of signification, that is, the meaning it is supposed to signify in a particular discourse. The recurring dimension of dislocation is intertwined with the prioritization of partial acts of identification over fully-fledged identities. It is thereby linked to four other concepts that need to be recalled: ontic and radical antagonism, ontic lack, and demands. (1) Ontic antagonism. Although discourses are precarious constructs, we nonetheless attempt to gain stability by drawing limits to an excluded outside. What lies beyond our discursive inside is an

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antagonistic camp whose existence is both dangerous and necessary for our own identity. For instance, an antagonized China is constructed as threatening the United States’ economic and military strength,7 but at the same time, it is necessary to uphold the United States’ proclaimed identity. Even though an antagonistic force seems to threaten our identity, we need it to constitute our own identity differentially. In linking antagonism with threat construction, the United States’ instability is externalized to an antagonistic other, although its permanent dislocation renders every identification precarious. In this sense, ontic antagonism circumscribes the negation of a seemingly stable identity that is projected onto a particular discourse. This negation is always partial because it relies on an opposition between specific signifiers. (2) Radical antagonism. Even if we could alleviate the problems ascribed to the presence of an antagonistic other or dissolve the antagonistic force altogether, we would neither attain complete and stable identities nor would we live in a world without antagonism. Although the antagonistic other encompasses a particular partial negation of our own identity, we construct it as representing its radical negation, as if it was the absolute source of instability that prevents us from reaching stability. An antagonistic other hence incorporates a radical negation that is incommensurable with it. However, this radical negation still exists in the form of radical antagonism which circumscribes the infinity of differential relations that are not part of a specific articulation. It thus remains unrepresentable and only becomes partially manifest in instances of ontic antagonism. Thus, the latter must not be approached in generally pejorative terms since it is our only means of presenting any form of negation. Acknowledging that antagonistic relations are essential in any articulation, we are tasked with not making antagonistic forces responsible for an incompletion that stems from our own permanent dislocation. Even if a particular antagonistic force was eventually dissolved, ontic antagonism would reappear in the form of displaced antagonistic relations. Instead of being liberated from antagonism, we would only encounter another manifestation of radical antagonism. (3) Ontic lack. Following our example of the United States during the Covid-19 pandemic, restricted healthcare capacities and limited economic strength—that is, missing objects in the constitution

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of the U.S. identity—were externalized to an antagonized China which supposedly prevented the realization of healthcare excellence and economic superiority in the United States. This makes visible the role of ontic lacks in the establishment of antagonistic relations. An ontic lack designates the absence of a particular discursive object due to the presence of an antagonistic other that prevents us from acquiring the illusion of complete constitution. The acknowledgment of limitations to our proclaimed identity produces mechanisms of externalization through which our incompletion is projected onto an antagonistic other that is made responsible for the existence and continuation of instabilities and deficiencies in our identity. (4) Demands. In order to regain an illusionary stable identity, demands arise to resolve these ontic lacks, which would necessitate the dissolution of its alleged source: an antagonistic other. However, even if we could achieve the task of satisfying a particular demand and its respective ontic lack, identity would not be complete because of the constitutive character of permanent dislocation that renders every act of identification necessarily partial. Demands would hence only recur as the desire for complete constitution cannot be satisfied. We have finally arrived at the second dimension in our multidimensional framework of global crises: recurring ontic dislocation. It has been scrutinized how ontological dislocation must be approached as the permanent impossibility of constituting meaning completely. It is this notion of permanent ontological dislocation that recurring dislocation rests on, since without the impossibility of complete constitution, it would be possible for signifiers to acquire stable meanings, that is, it would be possible to achieve complete identities. However, since permanent dislocation is a constitutive characteristic of the social, we are left with an essential incompleteness of every articulatory process. In every articulation, we are confronted with recurring dislocation, and equally, with a recurring dimension of crisis.

Notes 1. For a discussion of identification in constructivist IR, see Lebow (2013, 2016). 2. Trump, Donald J. March 18, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”.

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3. Trump, Donald J. March 22, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”. 4. Trump, Donald J. May 29, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump on Actions Against China”. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid.

References Althusser, Louis. (1965) 1985. For Marx. London: Verso. Althusser, Louis, and Étienne Balibar. (1965) 1970. Reading Capital. London: New Left Books. Balibar, Étienne. 2015. “Althusser’s Dramaturgy and the Critique of Ideology.” Differences 26 (3): 1–22. Butler, Judith, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Žižek, eds. 2000. Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. London: Verso. Brewster, Ben. 1985. “Glossary.” In For Marx, edited by Louis Althusser, 249– 57. London: Verso. Griggs, Steven, and David Howarth. 2014. “Post-structuralism, Social Movements and Citizen Politics.” In Handbook of Political Citizenship and Social Movements, edited by Hein-Anton van der Heijden, 279–307. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Howarth, David, and Steven Griggs. 2012. “Poststructuralist Policy Analysis: Discourse, Hegemony, and Critical Explanation.” In The Argumentative Turn: Revisited Public Policy as Communicative Practice, edited by Frank Fischer and Herbert Gottweis, 305–42. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Lacan, Jacques. (1958) 1982. “Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality.” In Jacques Lacan and the École Freudienne: Feminine Sexuality, edited by Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose, 86–98. London: Macmillan. Laclau, Ernesto. (1977) 2011a. “Fascism and Ideology.” In Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism, Fascism, Populism, edited by Ernesto Laclau, 81–142. London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto, ed. (1977) 2011b. Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism, Fascism, Populism. London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto. 1980. “Democratic Antagonisms and the Capitalist State.” In The Frontiers of Political Theory: Essays in a Revitalised Discipline, edited by Michael Freeman and David Robertson, 101–39. Brighton: The Harvester Press.

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Laclau, Ernesto. 1985. “New Social Movements and the Plurality of the Social.” In New Social Movements and the State in Latin America, edited by David Slater, 27–42. Amsterdam: CEDLA. Laclau, Ernesto. 1987. “Class War and After.” Marxism Today April: 30–33. Laclau, Ernesto. 1988. “Metaphor and Social Antagonism.” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 249–57. Urbana: Illinois Press. Laclau, Ernesto. (1988) 1990. “Building a New Left.” In New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, edited by Ernesto Laclau, 177–96. London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto. 1990a. “Letter to Aletta.” In New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, edited by Ernesto Laclau, 159–74. London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto. 1990b. “New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time.” In New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, edited by Ernesto Laclau, 3–85. London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto. 1992. “Beyond Emancipation.” Development and Change 23 (3): 121–37. Laclau, Ernesto. 2000. “Identity and Hegemony: The Role of Universality in the Constitution of Political Logics.” In Contingency, Hegemony, Universality, edited by Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Žižek, 44–89. London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto. 2004. “Glimpsing the Future.” In Laclau: A Critical Reader, edited by Simon Critchley and Oliver Marchart, 279–328. London and New York: Routledge. Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason. New York: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto. 2006. “Why Constructing a People Is the Main Task of Radical Politics.” Critical Inquiry 32 (4): 646–80. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 1981. “Socialist Strategy: Where Next?” Marxism Today (January): 17–22. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. (1985) 2001. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. (1987) 1990. “Post-Marxism without Apologies.” In New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, edited by Ernesto Laclau, 97–132. London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto, and Lilian Zac. 1994. “Minding the Gap: The Subject of Politics.” In The Making of Political Identities, edited by Ernesto Laclau, 11–39. London: Verso. Lebow, Richard Ned. 2013. “Internal Borders: Identity and Ethics.” Global Society 27 (3): 299–318. Lebow, Richard Ned. 2016. National Identities and International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marchart, Oliver. 2003. “The Other Side of Order: Towards a Political Theory of Terror and Dislocation.” Parallax 9 (1): 97–113.

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Marchart, Oliver. 2012. “Elements of Protest: Politics and Culture in Laclau’s Theory of Populist Reason.” Cultural Studies 26 (2–3): 223–41. Nabers, Dirk. 2017. “Crisis as Dislocation in Global Politics.” Politics 37 (4): 418–31. Žižek, Slavoj. 1990. “Beyond Discourse-Analysis.” In New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, edited by Ernesto Laclau, 249–60. London: Verso.

CHAPTER 5

The Ephemeral Dimension of Dislocation

It has been examined herein how an ontological understanding of dislocation designates the permanently destabilized character of the social by denoting its impossibility of complete constitution. For this constitutive ontological feature cannot be encountered directly, recurring dislocation has been introduced to account for the recurring incompleteness of every articulatory process. However, so far how these dimensions of dislocation are related to temporary disruptions has not been addressed. It therefore becomes necessary to theorize an ephemeral dimension of dislocation that captures what is commonly referred to as temporary crisis events.

5.1

Ephemeral Dislocation and Crisis

Even though Laclau does not elaborate on the concept of crisis, his work nonetheless includes sparse references that address crisis theoretically. Since Laclau occasionally adduces the concept in relation to an ephemeral dimension of dislocation, it becomes necessary to critically reflect how Laclau addresses crisis in these passages. Initial remarks on crisis can already be found in Politics and Ideology where Laclau makes reference to periods of crisis when introducing the notion of displacement. As has already been discussed, Laclau contrasts periods of crisis with periods of stability where the illusionary unity of discursive structures remains relatively stable since contradictions within discourses are © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 N. Klopf, Global Crisis, Global Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25140-5_5

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settled through displacements that prevent the emergence of antagonistic frontiers. This also means that discourses are not subject to drastic alternations since emerging contradictions can be absorbed by existing discursive structures, integrating them as differential positions within the respective discourse (Laclau [1977] 2011a, 102–3). This stands in contrast to periods of crisis where the “confidence in the ‘natural’ or ‘automatic’ reproduction of the system” (Laclau [1977] 2011a, 103) is lost. That is, the previously naturalized character of discursive structures is questioned, and the latter can no longer be reproduced without antagonistic forces struggling to implement an alternative organization of society. It is in this sense that a “dissolution of the unity of the dominant ideological discourse” takes place and “a new ideological unity” is attempted to be established (Laclau [1977] 2011a, 103). Laclau derives this understanding of crisis from Althusser’s notion of condensation which marks the disruption of discursive structures in periods of revolution. Whereas through displacements, contradictions are integrated as differential positions within the respective discourse, in periods of crisis, previously differential contradictions fuse into an antagonistic unity through processes of condensation (Althusser [1965] 1985, 211). Thereby, contradictions do no longer merely present differential positions, but they form what Laclau would later term chains of equivalences in opposition to the hegemonic contradiction. This subsumption of differential positions is present in the formation of every antagonistic relation, and consequently, in every attempt to overthrow the existing hegemonic discourse (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 136). When particular positions become united in an antagonistic camp, they are no longer merely linked through differential relations, but relations of equivalence are established since each particular position shares the opposition to an antagonistic other, e.g., the existing regime which is contested. Equivalential chains therefore emerge from the opposition of different particular positions against a common antagonistic other. It is this common opposition which makes equivalence possible, and which enables the condensation of differential contradictions into an antagonistic unity (Laclau 1992, 133). However, if differential positions become equivalent with respect to an antagonistic other, it is necessary for this chain of equivalences to assume a particular name that represents the antagonistic camp towards its contestant. As particular positions are the only means available, one position must necessarily acquire the function of representing the whole

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chain of equivalences. It is at this point that Laclau brings in the notion of an empty signifier since this position ceases its particular meaning when representing the equivalential chain and thereby becomes relatively empty, i.e., deprived of its particular meaning (Laclau [1994] 2007, 42). If its particular meaning would remain dominant, the respective signifier could not become “the surface of inscription of a plurality of demands beyond their particularities” (Laclau 2000b, 210), that is, it would not be able to absorb multiple differential positions in a united chain of equivalences. This has become visible during the Covid-19 pandemic as travel restrictions served to differentiate between those that belong to a certain society and those that are banned from entering the country. Trump established travel bans on China, restricting the entry of every person except U.S. citizens and permanent residents regardless of potential infections.1 Therefore, travel restrictions also served to expel Chinese citizens from the country and were only partially targeted at containing the spread of the virus. Trump thus constructed a particular vision of the U.S. society whereby he subsumed various different groups under a common name—the American people—that can lawfully enter the United States. At the same time, non-American citizens were restricted from traveling to the U.S. which established antagonistic relations along the frontiers of citizenship and permanent residency. However, this does not reflect the composition of the U.S. society which can certainly not be reduced to these matters. Trump’s construction of the American people therefore merely serves as an empty signifier which comprises a particular, and thereby limited, articulation of the United States. Through this production of an empty signifier, the permanent dislocation of the United States manages to “acquire a certain form of discursive presence” (Laclau 2004, 280) since empty signifiers give an illusionary name to the absent completion of society. Against this background, it now becomes possible to reflect on Laclau’s differentiation between periods of stability and periods of crisis. Beyond any doubt, this differentiation follows closely Althusser’s theorization of periods of stability and revolutionary ruptures which must thus be taken into consideration when approaching Laclau’s account of crisis. For Althusser, revolution presents an exceptional phenomenon in which capitalism is confronted with enormous disruptions due to the condensation of multiple contradictions which can no longer be settled within traditional capitalist structures. Equally, Laclau theorizes crises as exceptional periods in which hegemonic discourses become disrupted and

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new forms of social organization emerge. However, this differentiation between stability and crisis presents a simplified perspective on society that only takes into account drastic recompositions of hegemonic orders. It is therefore no wonder that Laclau refrains from theorizing crisis in terms of an Althusserian understanding of revolution in his later work and instead accounts for the continuous destabilization of discourses through notions of dislocation. Even though Laclau advances his theorization of dislocation throughout his work, his occasional references to crisis remain conceptually tied to Althusser. While in Politics and Ideology, Laclau maintains that hegemonic structures are confronted by crisis when “a new fraction seeks to impose its hegemony but is unable to do so within the existing structure of the power bloc” (Laclau [1977] 2011b, 173), the same approach to crisis can be encountered in Laclau’s later work. He contends that crises mark “moments in which new social antagonisms directly impinged on the traditional political spaces”, continuing that “these crises were always crises of a total model of society” (Laclau 1985, 38). Here, crisis again designates the disruption of hegemonic discourses and their radical reorganization. This Althusserian understanding of crisis is also reflected when Laclau for the first time links crisis to dislocation, arguing that “[t]he combination of dislocations produced by the world imperialistic chain and the First World War led to a revolutionary crisis that made the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks possible” (Laclau 1990b, 240). In this passage, it becomes clear that Laclau differentiates crisis from a recurring understanding of dislocation. While the latter, at this point, denotes the disjointedness, or disharmony, of tasks and agential capacities during the Russian Revolution, the notion of crisis is again conceptually tied to the recomposition of hegemonic structures. This limited understanding of crisis finally dissolves with the publication of New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. However, instead of advancing this concept, Laclau refrains from further conceptualizations of crisis and continues to use it in a fairly mundane manner. He mentions that “a dislocated structure is an open structure in which the crisis can be resolved in the most varied of directions” (Laclau 1990a, 50) whereby crisis denotes some kind of rupture in sedimented discursive structures that is attempted to be filled through processes of identification. However, whereas crisis here retains at least some conceptual relevance, it finally becomes an ambiguous concept in Contingency, Hegemony, Universality since Laclau argues that in the world capitalist system,

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“crises at one point in the system create dislocations at many other points” (Laclau 2000b, 203). Thereby, it remains unclear whether crisis is equated with dislocation or whether it must be treated as a different concept. The concept of crisis is thus not advanced in Laclau’s theory and merely acquires an exceptional ephemeral dimension in denoting the radical disruption of hegemonic discourses. When Laclau continues to use crisis in a broader manner, this only contributes to its conceptual vagueness, even though some references to an ephemeral dimension remain present. However, this conceptual vagueness can also be encountered in Laclau’s reception that deals with the conceptual merits of dislocation where crisis appears as an equally ambiguous term. Howarth, for instance, continuously makes reference to crisis throughout his work when discussing dislocatory events. Thereby, crises appear as somehow conterminous with dislocatory events even though their relation is never made explicit. For example, when defining dislocation, Howarth contends that dislocation can be specified as “those ‘events’ or ‘crises’ that cannot be represented within an existing discursive order” (Howarth 2004, 261). As he does not elaborate on the concept of crisis as such, his references to the latter merely seem to fulfill an illustrative function when discussing dislocation. This also becomes visible when he regards the incomplete nature of discursive structures which is revealed “in moments of crisis and contestation, that is, which we have conceptualized as experiences of dislocation” (Griggs and Howarth 2014, 292). However, as Howarth repeatedly makes reference to moments (Glynos and Howarth 2007, 79; 2008, 164; Howarth 2013, 183), times (Griggs and Howarth 2002, 102; Howarth 2013, 258), periods (Howarth and Stavrakakis 2000, 7), and conditions (Howarth and Griggs 2015, 116) of ‘crisis and dislocation’, the relation between these terms remains blurred. Although it can be assumed that Howarth emphasizes the interchangeable meaning of crisis and dislocation by addressing both terms simultaneously, it remains questionable whether this conjunction is conclusive if both terms are supposed to be conterminous. Stavrakakis also highlights an ephemeral dimension of crisis when discussing dislocation. In contrast to Howarth, however, he not only equates crisis with dislocatory events (Stavrakakis 2005, 247; 2007, 195; Stavrakakis and Chrysoloras 2006, 150) but at some points also differentiates both concepts. When addressing the ‘ecological crisis’, Stavrakakis notes that this crisis is characterized by a “dislocatory dimension” (Stavrakakis 2000, 108) which describes its disruptive effects on existing

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discursive structures. The ‘ecological crisis’ further not only entails discursive disruptions but it also encompasses an ontological dimension which depicts “the unpredictability and severity of natural forces” (Stavrakakis 2000, 108). That is, ephemeral dislocations include an unrepresentable dimension which Stavrakakis defines as “the real of nature” (Stavrakakis 2000, 108) in an Lacanian sense. Just as any discursive structure, nature cannot be represented entirely since it consists of an infinity of potential differential relations. Thus, the disruption of sedimented discursive structures through dislocatory events presents only one aspect of the ‘ecological crisis’ which can only be understood thoroughly when taking its ontological dimension into account. In his later work, Stavrakakis does not restrict dislocatory events to crises and leaves open the possibility that some other kinds of disruptive events might constitute ephemeral dislocations (Panizza and Stavrakakis 2021, 25; Stavrakakis 2017, 528; 2019, 201). Thereby, however, exactly how crisis might be conceptualized, how it can be differentiated from dislocation, and what other kinds of events might present ephemeral dislocations remains in the dark. Against this background, the ambiguous conceptualization of crisis in relation to dislocation becomes visible. Even though crisis has acquired a somewhat ephemeral dimension both in Laclau’s approach along an Althusserian notion of condensation and in his reception that vaguely theorizes crisis in relation to dislocatory events, the concept of crisis remains deprived of conceptual clarity. This makes clear that Nabers’ work, again, is invaluable for advancing towards a discursive systematization of crisis since he discusses most thoroughly crisis in terms of dislocation. His approach not only renders it possible to scrutinize crisis in terms of permanent dislocation, but his remarks on an ephemeral dimension of dislocation are also fruitful for developing a multidimensional framework of global crises.

5.2

A Definition of Ephemeral Dislocation

Laclau’s theoretical engagement with dislocation has long been dominated by a recurring perspective that emerged from capitalist developments during the Russian Revolution. An ephemeral dimension has only been developed in the course of his work and was first approached more thoroughly in New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. It is important to note that whereas an ephemeral dimension of dislocation

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is certainly ontic, it nonetheless must be differentiated from the recurring dimension of ontic dislocation. A discursive framework of dislocation must therefore not only differentiate between an ontic and ontological level of dislocation, but dislocation acquires a permanent ontological, recurring ontic, and ephemeral ontic dimension. Laclau addresses an ephemeral dimension of dislocation when discussing the dissolution of structural laws in the course of capitalist developments in late nineteenth-century Russia. As has been mentioned, Trotsky reckoned that the Russian bourgeoisie was incapable of leading the revolution which required the proletariat to transcend its tasks and take over those of the bourgeoisie (Laclau 1990a, 47). This revolutionary strategy emerged from a number of dislocations: First, the relation between base and superstructure was dislocated as “the military-bureaucratized state of tsarism inverts the ‘normal’ relations between state and civil society” (Laclau 1990a, 47). Second, the relation between the Russian Revolution and the bourgeoisie as its agent was dislocated as the bourgeoisie was replaced by the proletariat that took over its tasks. Third, the relation between socialism and democracy was dislocated as democracy was originally thought as succeeding socialism which, however, did not hold true in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution (Laclau 1990a, 47). In these passages, dislocation does not designate the disjointedness of tasks and agential capacities, as it did in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy when Laclau addressed the Russian Revolution. Instead, dislocation appears as the dissolution of supposedly natural laws of capitalism. This becomes apparent when Laclau argues that “[t]he possibility of revolution does not spring from underlying and positive structural laws dominating the whole of the historical process, but from the latter’s dislocations” (Laclau 1990a, 47–48). It remains important to notice, however, that here dislocation does not generally refer to the impossibility of structural laws, but Laclau understands dislocation as particular moments, as particular “dislocatory junctures” (Laclau 1990a, 46). Nevertheless, permanent dislocation plays a role since it is against the impossibility of complete constitution that essentialist laws of historical development are ruled out. Laclau further notes that the uneven development of capitalism “results from the disruption of a structure by forces operating outside it” such that this “unevenness of development is the result of the dislocation of an articulated structure” (Laclau 1990a, 50). He thereby already hints at the possibility that this dimension of dislocation does not merely denote

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the dissolution of allegedly natural laws of capitalism, but it also designates more generally the disruption of any supposedly natural structure. This understanding of ephemeral dislocation becomes accentuated when Laclau departs from his example of late nineteenth-century Russia and approaches dislocation generally as the disruption of sedimented discursive structures. He mentions, for instance, that a group, and consequently also an individual, can be confronted by “a range of dislocations in its customary practices” (Laclau 1990a, 64). Citing the example of the German economic crisis of the 1920s, Laclau notes that “[a]ll routine expectations and practices – even the sense of self-identity – had been entirely shattered” which he understands as a “generalized dislocation of traditional patterns of life” (Laclau 1990a, 65). Along these lines, Laclau also uses dislocation to describe the disruption of “basic principles” (Laclau 1990a, 66) as well as “norms and beliefs” (Laclau 1990a, 71). Laclau continues to address this broader understanding of ephemeral dislocation in his later work. In The Making of Political Identities, he notes that the failure of any discursive position to represent the completion of identity “will trigger new acts of identification” (Laclau and Zac 1994, 33) that disrupt sedimented discursive structures. It is in these moments that the indeterminacy of identity comes to the fore, and which Laclau specifies as “the moment of dislocation” (Laclau and Zac 1994, 34). Dislocation thus acquires a revelatory function, denoting the disruption of sedimented practices which reveals the incompletion of identity. A similar understanding of dislocation can be found in Contingency, Hegemony, Universality where Laclau contends that sedimented practices “can experience deep dislocations” (Laclau 2000a, 82). He illustrates this when discussing the establishment of the Brazilian republic in the late nineteenth-century when “[e]verything changed with the transition from the Empire to the republic, and the many administrative and economic changes it brought about – which, in various ways, dislocated traditional life in the rural areas” (Laclau 2000a, 82–83). Against this background, it becomes noticeable how Laclau attaches a distinct ephemeral meaning to dislocation such that ephemeral dislocation can be defined as the disruption of sedimented discursive structures. It must be underlined, however, that this account of dislocation does not denote the permanently incomplete nature of sedimented practices, but it designates their temporary rupture. Nevertheless, for this disruption to be possible, discourses must always be relatively destabilized, that

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is, never completely constituted, since otherwise ephemeral disruptions could not emerge, but we would be confronted with completely harmonized discourses. Hence, ephemeral dislocations must be viewed against the permanent incompletion of meaning, that is, permanent dislocation, which Laclau already hints at when mentioning that ephemeral dislocations operate in “the terrain of an absent structural determination” (Laclau 1990a, 59). However, if sedimented practices are always partially destabilized—even if this destabilization remains obscured—ephemeral dislocations merely accentuate the incompletion of discursive structures that has already been there. It therefore becomes necessary to scrutinize the relationship between this permanent destabilization and the ephemeral dimension of dislocation more thoroughly.

5.3

The Construction of Ephemeral Dislocation

How ephemeral dislocation designates the disruption of sedimented discursive structures has been scrutinized. It now needs to be specified what this disruption refers to exactly. Sedimented practices can generally be described as naturalized signs—in a broad sense of the term—that are no longer questioned by large parts of society. However, this naturalization entails an act of concealment through which their contingent nature becomes obscured (Laclau 1990a, 34). Thereby, the recurring dislocation that is inherent in every process of articulation becomes obliterated, and particular discursive structures acquire an illusionary stability. Hence, if the sedimentation of discursive structures denotes the concealment of their contingent nature, disruption can only regard the disruption of this concealment. Ephemeral dislocation then can also be defined as the disclosure of the contingent nature of sedimented discursive structures. It is in this sense that dislocation acquires a revelatory function in rendering visible the underlying incompleteness of the social. Through the disclosure of sedimented practices, it becomes apparent that discursive structures are not unalterable but subject to precarious articulations. The ephemeral dimension of dislocation could be observed during the Covid-19 pandemic when discursive structures were significantly disrupted through, for instance, travel restrictions, business shutdowns, school closings, altered hygiene guidelines, and measures of social distancing. Naturalized forms of social life have been brought to a halt, and every reassurance of invulnerable societies, stable economies, and prepared healthcare systems has been exposed as illusionary.

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However, the disclosure of sedimented practices does not implicate their transformation. That is, ephemeral dislocation must not be equated with the alteration of sedimented discursive structures. Even though disclosure might lead to rearticulations that engender the emergence of alternative sediment practices, sedimented discursive structures could also be attempted to be retained in endeavors to leave the hegemonic discourse intact. This could also be observed during the Covid-19 pandemic when Trump only belatedly responded to the pandemic, maintaining sedimented forms of social life in the beginning. He issued national guidelines only in March 2020 that recommend avoiding gatherings of more than ten people, refraining from eating in bars and restaurants, and engaging in distance learning when possible.2 At the same time, Trump hesitated to extend social restrictions, intending to return to previously sedimented practices as soon as possible, which would supposedly enable the United States to regain its healthcare excellence and economic strength.3 Although it has been clarified how the disruption of sedimented practices must be understood, the question remains how ephemeral dislocations emerge. Whereas a permanent and recurring dimension of dislocation are constitutive of the social, ephemeral dislocation presents a constructed phenomenon. This does not mean, however, that material conditions are disregarded. Discursive structures do never merely present linguistic constructs nor material conditions, but any material object is entangled with meaning when entering particular discourses. Discursive structures thus present materiality/meaning complexes which can neither be reduced to linguistic nor material transformations. However, if the disruption of sedimented practices exceeds the alteration of material conditions, the latter are not necessarily reflected in transformed discursive structures. Instead, material conditions might change drastically without sedimented practices being called into question since altered material conditions can be marginalized or constructed in line with existing discursive structures. For instance, at the beginning of the Covid19 pandemic, Trump ignored its severity and marginalized its impact on the United States, which is reflected in his belated responses. Even though the U.S. had already reported infection numbers in the thousands, Trump only released loose Covid-19 guidelines in March 2020.4 Against this background, it becomes clear that ephemeral dislocations must be constructions that are entangled with, but not determined by alterations in material conditions.

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Translocation

Nabers offers valuable steps for theorizing the emergence of ephemeral dislocation since, in his later work, he differentiates between two aspects of dislocation: antagonism and translocation (Nabers 2019, 271). These concepts provide the basis for understanding the construction of ephemeral dislocation. As Nabers puts forward an ontic perspective on antagonism, it first has to be recalled how ontic antagonism marks the precarious limits of society. Although antagonistic camps are established in contrast to particular discourses, the relation between antagonistic discourses is not one of mere opposition, since this would presuppose that we could contrast stable societies. Instead, antagonistic limits are always permeable, which means that discourses can never prevent the transition of alternative signifiers into existing discourses. That is, discourses cannot be neatly demarcated, but we are always confronted with the partial infiltration of antagonistic elements into supposedly stable discourses (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 144). It is in this sense that antagonism encompasses the notion of an essentially unstable society. However, even though antagonism renders complete stability impossible, at the same time, it generates relative stability. When antagonistic frontiers are established, we do not contrast precarious discourses, but imaginary stable societies are demarcated from antagonistic ones and societies appear to be neatly separated. Nevertheless, although we do not always encounter the precariousness of discourses, the latter remain permanently destabilized since permanent dislocation renders the establishment of stable frontiers impossible. It now becomes possible to address the construction of ephemeral dislocation more thoroughly. Even though discourses are continuously threatened by the transition of antagonistic elements, this transition remains obscured through the illusion of stable societies. Thereby, antagonistic frontiers that separate particular discourses seem to be clear cut and antagonistic signifiers appear to be solely located outside of an imaginary stable society. It is against this background that ephemeral dislocations can emerge since their construction presupposes the establishment of allegedly stable antagonistic frontiers. Nabers therefore introduces the concept of translocation to describe “a situation in which a signifier that is seen as alien to a particular discourse enters and destabilizes the internal structure of that discourse” (Nabers 2019, 271). Even though translocation is fruitful for theorizing the emergence of dislocation, Nabers leaves

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some questions open when introducing this concept. As he foregrounds an understanding of dislocation as a permanent attribute of the social, translocation seems to be situated in this ontological perspective which, however, appears to contradict his definition of translocation that seems to be more in line with an ephemeral dimension of dislocation where certain elements are in fact constructed as alien to an allegedly stable discourse. However, since Nabers’ use of translocation cannot be decoupled from a constitutive structural perspective, as he maintains that both antagonism and translocation serve to constantly destabilize any society (Nabers 2019, 271), his notion of translocation is ambiguous at times, or at least, the relation between different dimensions of dislocation remains unnoticed. In the following, translocation therefore acquires a distinct ontic character in line with Nabers’ aforementioned definition, denoting the ephemeral processes “in which a signifier that is seen as alien to a particular discourse enters and destabilizes the internal structure of that discourse” (Nabers 2019, 271). Translocation thus entails two aspects: First, it designates how antagonistic signifiers are articulated as entering a supposedly stable discourse. Second, it acknowledges that this infiltration destabilizes ‘the internal structure of that discourse’. This latter statement must be understood in relation to ephemeral dislocation. Translocation destabilizes discourses as the acknowledgment that antagonistic signifiers enter particular discourses renders visible the contingent nature of the latter. Translocation must therefore be regarded as the process leading to ephemeral dislocation since it effects the disclosure of formerly sedimented discursive structures. Against this background, the construction of ephemeral dislocation can be depicted as follows: (1) Ontic antagonism. The emergence of ephemeral dislocation presupposes the establishment of antagonistic frontiers. Thereby, an allegedly stable discourse is constructed in relation to antagonistic discourses in which always already transitioning elements, such as diseases, appear to be solely located. We could observe this during the Covid-19 pandemic as the United States was constructed as neatly demarcated from China, with the latter being the continuing source of instability although the Coronavirus had already spread in the United States. (2) Translocation. In the construction of ephemeral dislocation, these antagonistic elements are picked up and continue to be constructed as utterly foreign to an imaginary stable discourse. However,

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whereas they have initially been constructed as merely located in antagonistic discourses, they now seem to infiltrate an allegedly stable society. Antagonistic elements become spatially uprooted, so to speak, departing from an antagonistic discourse and contaminating an allegedly stable one. During the Covid-19 pandemic, this became visible as the Coronavirus has continuously been constructed as a foreign element that infiltrated the U.S. and destabilized its healthcare and economy. (3) Ephemeral dislocation. This constructed infiltration provokes the disclosure of sedimented discursive structures since the alleged stability of discourses is disrupted by the presence of antagonistic elements. Processes of translocation therefore engender the construction of ephemeral dislocation. How we understand the temporary destabilization, or ephemeral dislocation, of the United States therefore depends on the establishment of particular antagonistic relations and the construction of particular translocatory processes. If either of these aspects had been constructed in another way, disruptions during the Covid-19 pandemic could well have been articulated differently. However, ephemeral dislocations merely present temporary disruptions of sedimented discursive structures since discourses do not remain in this state of overt instability, but they attempt to regain stabilization. They therefore depend on processes of institutionalization that obscure their precarious character and obliterate that every discourse is constantly destabilized through the constitutive character of permanent dislocation. In this sense, Laclau contends that “the system of possible alternatives tends to vanish and the traces of the original contingency to fade” such that “the instituted tends to assume the form of a mere objective presence” (Laclau 1990a, 34). Discourses then only appear to be relatively stable since discursive structures have been institutionalized through social practices, norms, rules, and institutions that are taken for granted by large parts of society. The attributes making up an allegedly stable discourse are not constantly overthrown and rearranged, but through processes of institutionalization, societies remain relatively stable (Laclau 1990b, 224). Hence, even though antagonistic elements are never solely incorporated into external discourses but continuously transition into allegedly stable ones, this permanent instability is constantly obscured despite being omnipresent and only resurfaces through ephemeral dislocations.

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It is thus possible for discourses to regain an illusionary stability in the aftermath of ephemeral dislocations, that is, when infiltrating antagonistic elements are again constructed as solely located outside of the discourse in question. For instance, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump attempted to expel the antagonistic signifier in the form of the Coronavirus from the United States through the establishment of travel restrictions. He thereby accentuated existing tensions towards China and transformed the latter into a general opponent to the United States’ healthcare and economy.5 In this sense, Trump not only declared that he limited the spread of the virus through travel bans, but he claimed that he “stopped China from coming to the United States”,6 generally demarcating China from the U.S. in an antagonistic relationship. However, we are not compelled to expel every destabilizing element that confronts particular discourses, since discourses can also regain stability through the incorporation of antagonistic elements whereby the latter cease their antagonistic character and become non-antagonistic differential positions (Laclau 2000a, 77). Regardless of how ephemeral dislocation is approached, Nabers rightly mentions that through processes of institutionalization, “the ‘lack’ that was triggered by the crisis is resolved and the process is then experienced as the recovery of something that has been there all along” (Nabers 2015, 123). However, as institutionalization only obliterates the permanent dislocation of the social, institutionalized discursive structures will always be precarious complexes that remain vulnerable to the resurfacing of ephemeral dislocations. 5.3.2

Summary

Having elaborated the ephemeral dimension of dislocation, it finally becomes possible to conclude the discursive framework of dislocation that has been crystallized throughout Laclau’s work. Whereas a permanent ontological and recurring ontic dimension of dislocation often remain obscured, ephemeral dislocation immediately confronts us when sedimented discursive structures become disrupted, traditional channels of behavior are questioned, and naturalized norms, rules, and beliefs are unraveled. Ephemeral dislocation must be understood as this disclosure of the contingent nature of sedimented discursive structures. It is this sense of disclosure that we address when speaking of temporary disruptions in times of crisis. However, ephemeral dislocation remains a constructed phenomenon because it is far from clear which sedimented structures are

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laid bare and in which way they are articulated as disrupted. The concept of translocation is therefore essential in understanding how ephemeral dislocation is constructed. It defines the process “in which a signifier that is seen as alien to a particular discourse enters and destabilizes the internal structure of that discourse” (Nabers 2019, 271). Translocation hence presupposes the demarcation of an antagonistic discourse from which alien elements infiltrate an allegedly stable discourse, which engenders the destabilization of sedimented discursive structures. Against the immediate consequences of ephemeral dislocation, it is no wonder that Laclau’s reception often restricts dislocation to its ephemeral dimension. However, it must be recognized that ephemeral dislocations only lay bare the fundamental permanent dislocation of the social and its manifestation in recurring ontic dislocation. Any analysis of ephemeral disruptions must therefore take the multidimensional character of dislocation into account. Against this background of dislocation, it finally becomes clear that crisis presents a multilayered concept that must be subdivided into three distinct yet interrelated levels. That is, crisis must be approached in terms of a three-dimensional framework of dislocation that differentiates between permanent ontological, recurring ontic, and ephemeral ontic dislocation.

Notes 1. Trump, Donald J. January 31, 2020. “Proclamation on Suspension of Entry as Immigrants and Nonimmigrants of Persons who Pose a Risk of Transmitting 2019 Novel Coronavirus”. 2. Trump, Donald J. March 16, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”. 3. Trump, Donald J. March 30, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”. 4. Trump, Donald J. March 16, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”. 5. Trump, Donald J. May 29, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump on Actions Against China”. 6. Trump, Donald J. April 20, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”.

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CHAPTER 6

Discourse Analysis

The Covid-19 pandemic has evoked an abundance of crisis articulations, revolving around the so-called Coronavirus Crisis. Having been diluted to a vague catch-all phrase, the latter encompasses all sorts of disaster, disruption, emergency, hardship, harm, and risk. The crisis character of the Covid-19 pandemic appears to be hardly more than an indication of its excessive strain on healthcare systems as well as its significant economic and social impacts. However, if its crisis character is not supposed to deteriorate into mundane vagueness, it remains to be analyzed what exactly constitutes the so-called Coronavirus Crisis. The three-dimensional framework of dislocation provides the theoretical starting point for proceeding towards a systematized and multilayered analysis of the Coronavirus Crisis that not only regards its temporary impacts on socio-economic structures, but it will also become evident how ephemeral disruptions merely present an accentuation of the inherently destabilized character of every society. Analyzing the Coronavirus Crisis presents a political endeavor that must be differentiated from the underlying occurrence of the Covid19 pandemic. While the latter certainly provides the material basis for subsequent crisis constructions, the material instances of the Covid-19 pandemic can be articulated in diverse ways. Therefore, we never deal with a single Coronavirus Crisis, but multiple Coronavirus Crises exist in which particular material aspects are articulated in certain ways while © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 N. Klopf, Global Crisis, Global Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25140-5_6

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others are marginalized. It is in this sense that Weldes has already argued with respect to the Cuban missile crisis that the establishment of Soviet missiles in Cuba provoked diverse crisis constructions, depending on which perspective we take (Weldes 1999, 17, 22). Hence, the Covid19 pandemic merely serves as what Weldes calls a “reality constraint” (Weldes 1999, 102) that renders credible certain constructions of the Coronavirus Crisis while putting others in the crosshairs of contestation. Even though crisis constructions are entangled in material circumstances, they are never determined by the latter such that the Covid-19 pandemic must be regarded as a loose material foundation that “allows a wide range of sometimes quite dramatically different representations” (Weldes 1999, 102). While the material character of Covid-19 cannot be denied, the meanings attached to its public health consequences and socio-economic impacts can differ drastically. Any analysis of the Coronavirus Crisis must therefore account for its contingent character since those discourses from which crisis constructions proceed considerably shape how the Covid-19 pandemic is constructed. Having elaborated a multidimensional framework of dislocation as the theoretical starting point for analyzing the Coronavirus Crisis, it has become apparent that ephemeral disruptions rely on a deeper structural level that depicts the inherently destabilized nature of sedimented discursive structures. If we seek to analyze the crisis construction of the Covid-19 pandemic, we thus cannot confine ourselves to the analysis of temporarily disrupted sedimented practices, but we must also engage in a deeper structural analysis that pays attention to persisting social structures that condition the construction of ephemeral crises and render any society inherently unstable. The analysis of the Coronavirus Crisis is therefore based on the previously developed threefold systematization of dislocation that differentiates between an ephemeral, a recurring, and a permanent dimension. Although the analysis focuses on a limited period of time during the Covid-19 pandemic, and hence on the ephemeral dimension of dislocation in particular, it also makes clear that an analysis of the pandemic cannot stop at scrutinizing temporary disruptions. How the pandemic is constructed as a particular kind of crisis depends on pre-existing identifications within the respective discourse, the maintenance of specific antagonistic frontiers, and the continuing desire to reach stability despite the omnipresence of social incompleteness. The analysis is thus not

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confined to discrete temporal boundaries but pays attention to permanently and recurringly dislocated social structures that condition the construction of temporary disruptions in the first place. I will henceforth emphasize important steps in the construction of the Covid-19 pandemic as a case of ephemeral dislocation, while relating this construction to aspects of recurring and permanent dislocation—which as such would warrant an extensive analysis including larger segments of world history. This necessitates an analysis of those hegemonic discursive structures that have been put under pressure during the Covid-19 pandemic, and which are principally unstable although their destabilization remains mostly obscured. The analysis thus focuses on the governmental construction of the Coronavirus Crisis in the United States under the presidency of Donald Trump since governmental statements provide an exceptionally clear perspective on hegemonic discourses.1 In order to gain a comprehensive overview of the Coronavirus Crisis, the analysis relies on a corpus of more than 1200 texts that were issued by the White House between Trump’s first remarks on Covid-19 in January 2020 until the end of his presidency in January 2021. This includes presidential speeches and remarks by Donald Trump and Mike Pence, press briefings and conferences by the Coronavirus Task Force under Trump’s presidency, statements of his Press Secretaries as well as background information issued by the U.S. government on the Covid-19 pandemic (White House 2021). The methodological approach aims at identifying structural characteristics in the corpus. Even though meaning production takes place through a plurality of textual and non-textual practices, some sort of translation always becomes necessary to make non-textual material accessible. Meaning production is therefore reflected in both non-textual and textual references. The latter are particularly suited for analyzing the governmental construction of the Coronavirus Crisis since major processes of meaning production are found in governmental statements that are either published in written form or were delivered orally. Although this analysis makes use of textual data, it must not be forgotten that semantic relations can be found in various forms, including text, speech, visuality, materiality, and performances (Barthes [1957] 1991; Bleiker 2018; Shim 2014). The proposed methodical approach is therefore not restricted to the analysis of textual data, but political discourse analysis can be utilized to analyze diverse forms of semantic relations.

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The overarching aim of the following analysis becomes deconstructing the structural makeup of the hegemonic discourse on the Coronavirus Crisis in the Unites States while identifying naturalized meaning systems as well as continuities and breaks within the discourse. In order to apply the theoretical assumptions of a multidimensional framework of dislocation to concrete phenomena, a methodical toolkit has been developed that combines corpus linguistic methods with insights from political discourse analysis. This makes it possible to analyze large text corpora with quantitative tools of corpus linguistics while maintaining in-depth analyses of relevant texts that are required to interpret the quantitative results of corpus linguistic analyses. While corpus linguistics is useful for obtaining frequent formal characteristics of written data, it cannot tell us which meaning these characteristics acquire. Therefore, interpretative techniques are necessary to make sense of the statistical results that corpus linguistics provides us with. While several scholars have successfully integrated corpus linguistics into political discourse analysis (e.g., Dzudzek et al. 2009; Glasze 2007; Nabers 2015), the latter remains a largely theory-driven endeavor with loose standards as to how theoretical assumptions are reflected in text data, how they can be utilized methodically, and how political discourse analyses might generally be structured. As Laclau is preoccupied with theoretical questions, the fragmentary character of political discourse analysis is not surprising. However, particularly in his later work, Laclau elaborates on rhetorical questions, suggesting that the semantic relations that govern his theoretical assumptions are rhetorical in nature. These considerations pave the way for advancing a methodical approach to Laclauian theory and therefore build the cornerstone for the analysis of the Covid19 pandemic. Noble approaches have approached towards a similar direction, formulating methodical strategies to make Laclauian theory more accessible for concrete analyses, although not always with reference to Laclau’s rhetorical remarks (e.g., Glynos et al. 2009; Jørgensen and L. Phillips 2002; Nonhoff 2007; Nymalm 2020; Walton and Boon 2014). Together with Laclau’s rhetorical considerations, these approaches provide the basis for developing a methodical toolkit for analyzing the multilayered character of crises along a multidimensional framework of dislocation. The following analysis focuses on investigating the Coronavirus Crisis during Donald Trump’s presidency and is hence particularly interested in the ephemeral dimension of dislocation. However, it also makes clear

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that the ephemeral construction of the Coronavirus Crisis is situated in an American discourse that cannot be decoupled from a recurring and permanent dimension. I will therefore successively analyze important steps in the construction of the Covid-19 pandemic as a case of ephemeral dislocation, while linking it back to the recurringly and permanently dislocated structure of the United States. Each step is informed by corpus linguistic analysis that is used to analyze the structural makeup of the corpus by identifying relevant signifiers and their typical connotations. Thereafter, major processes of meaning production are analyzed in a comprehensive rhetorical analysis, whereby the focus lies on the construction of differential, equivalential, hegemonic, and antagonistic relations. Finally, rhetorical analysis allows us to identify continuities and breaks in the corpus that reveal ephemeral disruptions of sedimented discursive structures as well as continuous processes of institutionalization.

6.1

Corpus Linguistics

Analyzing the Coronavirus Crisis follows the overarching aim of deconstructing the internal structure of the discourse on the Covid-19 pandemic, revealing naturalized discursive structures as well as continuities and breaks in the discourse. Corpus linguistics provides initial steps in proceeding along this path as it studies the structure and generation of meaning in discourses by scrutinizing regularity, repetition, and variation in large text corpora. Wolfgang Teubert therefore defines corpus linguistics as the “insistence on working only with real language data taken from the discourse in a principled way and compiled into a corpus” (Teubert 2005, 4). As a disciplinary field, corpus linguistics thus studies language based on written text data that has been processed into text corpora. As discourses cannot be accessed in their entirety, not least due to their permeable and permanently evolving character, we can always only study a sample of the discourse. Therefore, every analysis presents an approximation to the meaning of the Coronavirus Crisis (Teubert 2004, 100, 104). However, this approximation is all we can get if we take the constitutively incomplete character of discourses seriously. Corpus linguistics per se is thus not a method, but different methods can be used to process, structure, and analyze corpus data (Teubert 2005, 4). These methods allow us to study “the patterns and structures of semantic cohesion between text elements that are interpreted as compounds, multi-word units, collocations and set phrases” (Teubert [1999] 2007, 112). Hence, corpus

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linguistics is concerned with the semantic analysis of lexical items in which meaning becomes evident, and syntactical aspects of language only play a secondary role. If we follow Saussure in the assumption that signs must generally be differentiated into form and meaning, that is, in his understanding, signifier and signified, it becomes apparent that what we are interested in is not primarily the formal side of language but the meaning of lexical items. Hence, syntactical analysis is only of limited use in scrutinizing meaning, which leads Teubert to argue that “the only way to express the meaning of a text element or a text segment is to interpret it, that is, to paraphrase it” (Teubert [1999] 2007, 114). Paraphrases therefore become the central object of analysis in Teubert’s approach to corpus linguistics as meaning does not rest in the formal structure of language but in semantic relations between lexical items. For Teubert, “the meaning of a text element or a text segment is everything that has been said about it, in terms of a paraphrase or as a matter of usage; it is the result of the negotiation of the meaning within the discourse community” (Teubert [1999] 2007, 124– 25). He, therefore, regards meaning as a large and constantly evolving, but principally limited repertoire of paraphrases that describe, modify, and enhance our understanding of a particular research object. Following Teubert, if we seek to analyze the Coronavirus Crisis at a given point in time, we would not be unable to access its full meaning because of our inability to articulate an infinity of differential relations, but what hinders our access to meaning would be practical. That is, Teubert does not engage in ontological questions that problematize the essentially incomplete nature of meaning production. Instead, he alerts us that references of the research object are never completely accessible, either because they got lost over time or were only expressed verbally, and that paraphrases are continuously produced, which makes discourses constantly evolving. Thus, we have always to decide on and conduct our analyses with limited text corpora (Teubert 2004, 100; Teubert [1999] 2007, 113, 124–125). Teubert’s understanding of meaning therefore regards the partial meaning that discursive objects acquire in a given discourse, not through their formal arrangement, but in the way that “this object is represented, identified, explained, and defined solely by the potpourri of paraphrases that others have used before us” (Teubert 2005, 12). The quest of corpus linguistic analysis hence lies in the detection, structuration, and interpretation of paraphrastic content. As Teubert puts it, corpus linguistic methods have become “irreplaceable in detecting

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lexical items, sorting them in terms of their collocates and other patterns of usual usage, thus disambiguating different senses” (Teubert 2019, 141). In order to analyze meaning through paraphrases, different statistical methods have been developed that allow us to study frequent text elements and semantic segments such as words, multi-word units, collocations, and set phrases. However, although statistical methods inform us about frequent lexical items and recurrent paraphrases, they do not tell us how these findings must be interpreted (Teubert 2019, 142). Teubert thus views corpus linguistics as a multilayered process that includes the “identification of language data by categorial analysis” in which relevant patterns and semantic relations are processed and structured, the “correlation of language data by statistical methods” which informs subsequent interpretative practices by identifying statistically significant patterns, and the interpretation of these findings which is necessary to make sense of statistical results (Teubert [1999] 2007, 112). The analysis of collocations generally builds the backbone of corpus linguistics, allowing to identify frequently used patterns in language. Thereby, collocations are sought to be differentiated from arbitrary patterns that show no semantic cohesion between its lexical elements. The analysis of collocations hence aims at identifying recurring patterns, such that unique and rarely occurring patterns are usually dismissed except the study focuses on particular corpus segments in more detail (Teubert 2005, 6; Teubert [1999] 2007, 117). However, it is far from clear whether only syntactical combinations should qualify as collocations or whether the latter merely need some form of semantic cohesion beyond syntactical proximity. J. R. Firth prominently contends that “[m]eaning by collocation is an abstraction at the syntagmatic level and is not directly concerned with the conceptual or idea approach to the meaning of words” (Firth 1957, 196). Firth’s ‘abstraction at the syntagmatic level’ can be translated into some sense of syntactical proximity that co-occurring lexical items share. Teubert draws the same conclusion, arguing that “[c]ollocation in his sense is not about the paraphrases people have entered into discourse” (Teubert 2019, 143), which would concern the ‘conceptual or idea approach’ of meaning that Firth disregards. Even though Teubert repudiates Firth’s narrow understanding of collocations at this point, problematizing that syntactical proximity can only partially capture paraphrastic content, which is essential in scrutinizing meaning production (Teubert 2019, 144–45), he does not seem

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as averse to a Firthian understanding of collocations in his earlier publications. Despite stressing the importance of paraphrases, he remarks, for instance, that it is possible to analyze the “semantic cohesion between the lexical elements of a collocation by statistic means, that is, by detecting a significant co-occurrence of these elements within a sufficiently large corpus” (Teubert [1999] 2007, 117). Thereby, significant language patterns are determined depending on whether the frequency of the observed pattern “differs significantly from the statistically expected frequency of this combination” (Teubert [1999] 2007, 125). These types of analyses, however, usually rely on the identification of frequent syntactical combinations in a span of four to five words around given search terms. Thereby, the semantic cohesion of collocations is reduced to lexical items in close proximity to the analyzed text element, for only the immediate textual environment of collocates is included in the analysis. Although Teubert, at this point, refers to the relevance of statistical significance in determining relevant text patterns, he also departs from this perspective and stresses the importance of mere frequency “for detecting recurrent patterns defined by the co-occurrence of words” (Teubert 2005, 5), while holding on to a syntactical understanding of collocations that can be found in the ‘co-occurrence of words’. A similar perspective is put forward by McEnery and Hardie who explain that meaning emerges “in the characteristic associations that the word participates in, alongside other words and or structures with which it frequently co-occurs” (McEnery and Hardie 2012, 123). Thereby, they restrict the generation of meaning to those words and structures that words frequently co-occur with, and thereby side with Firth in the assumption that collocations necessitate some form of syntactical combination or textual proximity. McEnery and Hardie further oppose approaches that identify collocations based on non-statistical methods, such as analyzing semantic cohesion through close reading. For them, collocations should only be defined “in terms of co-occurrence patterns observed in corpus data” such that “any word co-occurrence phenomena identified by researcher intuition, by surveys of native speakers, or by means of any other type of data” is ruled out (McEnery and Hardie 2012, 123). Teubert hence recognizes that with disregarding any ‘subjective’ interference in the identification of relevant collocations, we are left with determining their relevance based on frequency or statistical significance (Teubert 2019, 144).

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Even though collocations are frequently characterized by some form of textual proximity and studied with reference to their statistical significance, in his later work, Teubert reminds us that collocations can also be seen as a “discovery procedure alerting us to paraphrastic content we might otherwise have overlooked” (Teubert 2019, 147). Analyzing collocations through paraphrases, as Teubert suggests, presents a non-statistical technique that studies collocations through concordances. Thereby, focus is put on “the linguist’s intuitive scanning of the concordance lines that yields up notable examples and patterns, not an algorithm or recoverable procedure” (McEnery and Hardie 2012, 126). This approach allows us to scrutinize the semantic cohesion of frequent patterns which exceeds co-occurring words that stand in close proximity to each other. Teubert reminds us that “[a]s long as people are free to use words however they like, there is no mathematical trick that could possibly find a common denominator for how they have paraphrased the meaning of the lexical item in question” (Teubert 2019, 144–45). We therefore should not restrict our understanding of collocations to syntactical proximity but instead direct our focus to the semantic relations that syntactical associations are sought to represent. In fact, if we limit ourselves to syntactical questions, the “lack of a fixed relationship between a word and its collocate, other than a mere co-occurrence within a text, means that collocation is overall of limited value to linguistic theory” (Barnbrook et al. 2013, 172). However, if we accept that the proximity of co-occurring words serves as an indication of semantic cohesion, collocations exceed the formal analysis of textual proximity at the syntactical level. Instead, collocations are a form of semantic relations, indicating semantic cohesion, that is, a semantic, not a syntactical association between textual elements. Syntactical considerations are merely one way of approaching semantic cohesion, but they can never exhaust the analysis of collocations as semantic relations can appear across sentences, paragraphs, or even complete texts. Teubert’s advancement towards scrutinizing collocations through the wider analysis of paraphrastic content hence is invaluable for going beyond the narrow, syntactical procedures of classical collocation analysis. This at least partially contradicts Georg Glasze’s application of Laclauian theory to corpus linguistics who adduces collocation analysis to identify potential empty signifiers in the corpus. For him, collocations have a syntactical character as he argues that “[t]he analysis of co-occurrences shows which words and phrases are linked with a

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certain specificity in the corpus, i.e., which words appear overproportionately in the proximity of a certain word” (Glasze 2007, 18, author’s translation; see also Dzudzek et al. 2009, 245). However, Laclau’s theorization of discursive relations, be it differential, equivalential, hegemonic, or antagonistic ones, does not justify the limitation of collocation analyses to syntactical co-occurrences since discursive relations are not reflected in the formal makeup of language but in the semantic relations between lexical items. Glasze starts from the same assumption, remarking that “[l]exicometric techniques examine how meanings are established through relations between lexical elements” (Glasze 2007, 11, author’s translation), but then expels semantic questions from his approach. Semantics only comes back into the picture in interpretative practices that make sense of statistically generated collocation lists (Dzudzek et al. 2009, 253–254; Glasze 2007, 19). Automatically generated collocation lists nonetheless provide useful information on frequent proximate patterns, but they should not be regarded as a standalone method. Instead, syntactical collocations should only inform broader concordance analyses that analyze paraphrastic collocations in close reading (Teubert 2019, 151–52). Thereby, however, we have to be aware that these analyses are subject to the researcher’s judgment as to how broad the context for possible concordances is defined, such as phrases, sentences, paragraphs, or complete texts, and which text data is determined as paraphrases for the research object (Teubert 2019, 150). But this should not lead us towards an overreliance on supposedly ‘objective’ techniques of analyzing collocations with statistical means, since we always have to choose between several measures that can be used to determine the statistical significance of collocations, and which often deliver diverse results (McEnery and Hardie 2012, 127; Teubert 2019, 147). McEnery and Hardie therefore remind us that “[b]ecause the analyst’s choice of statistic has such a major effect on the outcome, there is in effect an inherent subjectivity in the determination of what is, and what is not, a collocate” (McEnery and Hardie 2012, 127). Moreover, statistically determined collocation lists are always subject to the researcher’s input who determines which search terms reflect the research object, and which search span is appropriate to conduct the collocation analysis. Additionally, generated collocation results always have to be interpreted by the researcher who checks co-occurring patterns for their semantic cohesion and makes sense of the statistical findings (Baker 2012; Teubert [1999] 2007, 117; Teubert 2005, 5). Therefore, ‘subjectivity’ always guides the

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research process such that “a strictly scientific methodology cannot be the ultima ratio when it comes to meaning” (Teubert 2019, 158). 6.1.1

A Guide for Analysis

This methodical toolkit allows to analyze global crises using corpus linguistics. The latter makes it possible to work with large amounts of textual data, but it cannot substitute a close reading of relevant textual references that guides our interpretation of statistically identified semantic relations. Hence, corpus linguistics must be conducted as a first step when dealing with large text corpora, while being followed by a rhetorical analysis. In general, corpus linguistics provides useful insights into the structure and generation of meaning in a discourse. Its statistical methods are important for identifying frequent lexical items in the corpus as well as recurring paraphrases and typical articulations of relevant signifiers. We thus gain insights into the structural makeup of the governmental discourse on the Coronavirus Crisis in the United States, including recurring paraphrases of the pandemic as well as typical articulations of the U.S. This is essential for analyzing ephemeral disruptions of sedimented discursive structures as well as continuities in the United States’ selfidentification. Three methods are particularly relevant when analyzing global crises using corpus linguistics: frequency analysis, collocation analysis, and concordance analysis. These methods belong to the default features of most corpus linguistic software and are included, for example, in freeware such as AntConc (Anthony 2022). Frequency Analysis. Frequency analysis allows us to identify the most frequent words in the corpus and follows three major steps: generation, cleaning, and interpretation. Typically, frequency analysis is conducted by generating word lists that are sorted by absolute frequencies. Although every text element somehow contributes to processes of meaning production, we are not interested in unique or rare circumstances, but in recurring signifiers that either continuously structure the corpus during the time of analysis or frequently occur within a limited period, thereby denoting breaks within the discourse (see also Dzudzek et al. 2009, 240; Glasze 2007, 17). We hence focus on the most frequent words that significantly contribute to the overall structure of the discourse. The word list must then be cleaned of irrelevant items which, depending on the research object, could include prepositions, conjunctions, and

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pronouns. In the last step of cleaning, inflected forms of the same word might be grouped if inflection does not highlight different meanings that we would like to maintain. Grammatical categories such as gender, tense, voice, person, or number might well affect meaning structures. Whether we keep inflected forms as different items depends on situation-dependent interpretation. The cleaned word list finally provides the basis for our interpretation. Typically, this includes the categorization of relevant frequent words according to parts of speech or content characteristics. The latter proved useful in the analysis of the Coronavirus Crisis as three frequently addressed policy areas were relevant in its construction: healthcare, economy, and defense. Importantly, frequency analysis is not restricted to analyzing the whole corpus, but it can also be used to compare the development of frequent words during the period of analysis. Collocation Analysis. Syntactical collocation analysis can only present a partial picture of the paraphrastic content that constitutes the meaning of a particular signifier, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. It is nonetheless useful for identifying potentially relevant collocations and informing the subsequent concordance analysis. Syntactical collocation analysis therefore only plays a secondary role and does not provide straightforward findings on relevant patterns of meaning. Its application follows three major steps: generation, cleaning, and interpretation. Using corpus linguistic software, a collocation list is generated that lists the most frequent co-occurring words in textual proximity to specific search terms, usually in a radius of four to five words. For instance, a collocation analysis was conducted to determine words that co-occur with the United States. Thereby, United States and U.S. were chosen as search terms. It must be clear that such an analysis can both over- and underestimate actual references to the research object. For example, a collocation analysis cannot account for those situations in which the United States is either expressed through pronouns or only mentioned implicitly. We are hence tasked with choosing our search terms as accurately as possible while keeping in mind that this can only be an approximation. Moreover, a statistically generated collocation list merely serves as an approximation to semantic collocations that can only be analyzed in close reading. The collocation list then needs to be cleaned of rare and unique collocations as well as irrelevant ones, including, for instance, prepositions, conjunctions, and pronouns. Depending on the research interest, it might also be necessary to group collocations in which the same word appears in different inflected forms. Finally, this cleaned collocation list must be interpreted, whereby categorizing collocations

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according to parts of speech or content characteristics might come in handy for structuring the interpretation. Furthermore, we can compare the development of particular collocations during our period of analysis. In case of the Coronavirus Crisis, we could thus observe interesting developments in how the United States co-occurred with items such as strength, preparedness, and independence. Concordance Analysis. Concordance analysis aims at identifying paraphrases of our research object, which makes it possible to analyze how lexical items are regularly used in a corpus. That is, we are interested in those semantic relations that are relevant in their construction. In the case of the Coronavirus Crisis, the analysis sought to scrutinize how the Covid-19 pandemic was articulated in a broad context, comprising complete speeches, presidential remarks, and press conferences. Corpus linguistic software usually restricts concordances to short lines of a few words on each side of a specific search term. However, this method of visualizing keywords in context (KWIC) is of limited use when analyzing semantic relations that might well transcend phrases or sentences. Hence, concordance analysis should be conducted as a close reading of relevant paragraphs and complete texts (see also Baker et al. 2008, 284; Dzudzek et al. 2009, 242). This also includes the identification of collocations in a broader context that exceeds the syntactical proximity of classical collocation analysis.

6.2

Rhetorical Analysis

Even though corpus linguistics provides us with methods to identify frequent patterns in language, it does not tell us how to proceed once we identified typical paraphrases through a concordance analysis. The latter must therefore be conducted simultaneously with a rhetorical analysis that guides the way we structure our concordance analysis and interpret its results. Corpus linguistics must thus always be linked back to a theoretically informed rhetorical analysis that gives us theoretical guidance on how to identify and analyze relevant semantic relations. 6.2.1

Difference and Equivalence

According to Saussure, language is structured along syntagmatic and associative relations, which would later be called paradigmatic relations. He argues that “on the one hand, words acquire relations based on the linear

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nature of language because they are chained together” (Saussure [1916] 1959, 123). In this sense, text elements “are arranged in sequence on the chain of speaking”, building combinations that are “always composed of two or more consecutive units” (Saussure [1916] 1959, 123). For Saussure, syntagmatic relations therefore require syntactical linearity. In contrast, associative relations characterize words that are “associated in the memory” (Saussure [1916] 1959, 123). Whereas syntagms can be identified in every concordance, for they require the presence of their components in linear proximity, associations potentially substitute certain text elements and must be identified across paraphrases. Saussure hence remarks that “the associative relation unites terms in absentia in a potential mnemonic series” (Saussure [1916] 1959, 123, italics in original). He further makes clear that it is not predetermined which associations are evoked for particular text elements as “we are unable to predict the number of words that the memory will suggest” such that a particular word is “the point of convergence of an indefinite number of co-ordinated terms” (Saussure [1916] 1959, 126). Proceeding from the assumption that articulatory processes present semantic operations, which were first identified in the field of linguistics but then applied to social analyses, Laclau contends that processes of meaning production must be reflected in linguistic structures. He builds on Saussure’s differentiation between syntagmatic and associative, or paradigmatic, relations and puts forward the argument that differential and equivalential relations are reflected in syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations, respectively. That is, “the logic of difference tends to expand the syntagmatic pole of language, the number of positions that can enter into a relation of combination and hence of continuity with one another; while the logic of equivalence expands the paradigmatic pole – that is, the elements that can be substituted for one another” (Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001, 130). Syntagmatic relations hence denote the differential combination of signs, while paradigmatic relations designate their equivalential substitution in chains of equivalences (Laclau 1996, 210; Laclau 2000a, 77). The logic of equivalence “’universalizes’ a certain particularity on the basis of its substitutability with an indefinite number of other particularities” (Laclau 2000b, 193–94). Thus, when entering equivalential chains, particular signs can potentially be substituted for one another when ceasing their particular meanings. For Laclau, then, syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations present semantic relations that can be established between every meaningful entity, that is, every sign. They must

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not be restricted to linguistics, which leads to leaving the syntactical level behind that governed Saussure’s understanding of syntagms. This step renders it possible to proceed towards a semantic analysis of Laclauian theory as differential and equivalential relations, which build the basis for processes of meaning production, find their semantic counterpart in syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations. For relations of difference and equivalence cannot merely be observed at the syntactical level but first and foremost require semantic analysis, corpus linguistic collocation analyses cannot stop at the syntactical level, but it must engage in concordance analyses to identify semantic patterns. In Laclau’s investigation of semantic structures, however, syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations are only the starting point for more comprehensive rhetorical elaborations that mark the true value of his contribution. He follows Roman Jakobson in the assumption that the syntagmatic and paradigmatic poles of language reflect the rhetorical categories of metonymy and metaphor. Building on Saussure’s differentiation between relations of syntagmatic combination and paradigmatic substitution, Jakobson put forward the argument that the combinatory logic of syntagmatic relations links words in contiguity, while in paradigmatic relations of substitution, words are connected by similarity (Jakobson 1971, 55). He then links these linguistic categories to rhetoric, arguing that “[t]he metaphoric way would be the most appropriate term for the first case and the metonymic way for the second, since they find their most condensed expression in metaphor and metonymy respectively” (Jakobson 1971, 67–68). Jakobson, however, does not merely conceive of metaphor and metonymy as linguistic devices but as rhetorical relations that generally govern semantic processes, such that a “competition between both devices, metonymic and metaphoric, is manifest in any symbolic process, be it intrapersonal or social” (Jakobson 1971, 72). Language, in this sense, is necessarily rhetorical because syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations are always accompanied by figural, or tropological, movements. This becomes most apparent in paradigmatic relations, as in substitutions, the literal meaning is substituted with analogous terms, even if this analogy only denotes “the possibility of recurring in the same context” (Laclau 2012, 240). Paradigmatic relations therefore correspond to the rhetorical device of metaphor since a figural meaning replaces the literal one. This also means that relations of equivalence are essentially metaphoric. Those signs that enter chains of equivalences cease

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to have their particular meaning and become united under a universalized, and therefore figural, meaning that links these signs despite their particular differences. Although particular meaning cannot be completely eradicated, signifiers nevertheless transcend their particular meaning and become analogous in representing the universalized meaning of the equivalential chain. In this sense, Laclau remarks that metaphor “tends to essentialize the link between the terms of the analogy” (Laclau 2001a, 8). Tropological movements, however, not only occur in paradigmatic substitutions but also in syntagmatic combinations. Whereas in paradigmatic relations, particular meanings are substituted, in syntagmatic relations, the syntagmatic position as such is not eliminated, but meaning only emerges through relations of differential combination (Laclau 2012, 240). In this sense, signifiers are linked in terms of contiguity, although contiguous relations are not necessarily syntactical but first and foremost connected based on semantic cohesion. As at the syntagmatic level, meaning only emerges through differential combination with other signifiers, we are always confronted with figural meanings. Identifying the literal meaning would either require that meaning rests in the sign itself, ruling out any form of differential constitution, or that we could articulate an infinity of differential relations. Hence, syntagmatic relations are necessarily metonymic because meaning will always be figural. In contrast to the metaphoric movement of paradigmatic relations, however, the differential constitution of meaning remains visible as metonymy is merely grounded in relations of contiguity that do not eliminate the syntagmatic position. The differentiation between metaphoric analogy and metonymic contiguity then might also be depicted in terms of the distinction between necessity and contingency. Laclau declares that “a discourse will be more or less metaphoric depending on the degree of fixation that it establishes between its constitutive components” (Laclau 2001b, 237), whereas in metonymy, the contingency of differential relations remains visible. That is, it remains possible to identify those structural positions that are part of metonymic combinations. Their particularity is not undermined by universalizing processes that take place in the formation of equivalential chains. Metonymic meaning, nevertheless, also presents a partial, and hence figural, fragment of the potential infinity of differential relations. Metaphoric and metonymic relations thus are not entirely disconnected, but contingency and necessity rather present two poles of a continuum and mutually contaminate each other (Laclau [2007] 2014,

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62). Metaphoric substitution presupposes the existence of metonymic relations between those signifiers that enter equivalential chains. While the particular meaning of these signifiers is subverted in metaphoric movements, metaphoric totalization can never be completely reached, but it will always remain contaminated by the particular meanings of its constituents (Laclau 2001b, 247; Laclau [2007] 2014, 62). This also means that metonymic combination shades into metaphor as relations of difference are subverted by relations of equivalence whenever identities are attempted to be constituted. Identity formation cannot take place merely on differential grounds, but the illusion of completely constituted identities requires the establishment of antagonistic discourses around equivalential chains. 6.2.2

Hegemony

Metonymic and metaphoric relations are essential for scrutinizing semantic relations as they designate the tropological character of relations of difference and equivalence, which constitute the cornerstones for analyzing processes of meaning production. However, an analysis of the Coronavirus Crisis cannot stop at identifying difference and equivalence, but scrutinizing hegemonic practices, antagonistic relations as well as semantic disruptions is fundamental for further analysis. Laclau also engages in a rhetorical understanding of hegemonic relations when discussing metaphoric and metonymic movements. If we understand hegemony as the relation “by which a certain particular content overflows its own particularity and becomes the incarnation of the absent fullness of society” (Laclau 1995, 89), two aspects become particularly important: the establishment of equivalential chains that unite several particular elements, and the emergence of an empty signifier from these elements which give a name to the equivalential chain and purports to represent the completion of society. Metonymy and metaphor are therefore crucial in understanding the functioning of hegemonic operations. As has been discussed, those elements that become united in chains of equivalences initially share metonymic relations with each other. When entering equivalential chains, however, they cease to have their particular meanings and become potentially substitutable with each other, such that their metonymic differentiation fades. At this point, metaphoric totalization

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attempts to eliminate the traces of metonymic differentiation, and a movement takes places “from contingent articulation to essential belonging” (Laclau [2007] 2014, 63) as metonymy shades into metaphor. This movement makes it possible to analyze the universalized meaning which has emerged in processes of metaphoric totalization, and which is represented in the empty signifier that unites the equivalential chain. Laclau introduces the linguistic device of synecdoche into his rhetorical investigations to describe the functioning of empty signifiers. Thereby, he moves beyond the meaning of synecdoche as a linguistic device and, as in the case of metonymy and metaphor, conceives synecdoche as generally governing semantic relations. Synecdoche comes into play when a certain element of the equivalential chain transcends its particular meaning and purports to represent the meaning of the whole chain, that is, it “assumes the representation of a totality that exceeds it” (Laclau 2005b, 72; also Laclau 2001b, 249). This particular signifier hence functions as an empty signifier that has acquired a universalized meaning, supposedly representing the completion of society. It is this semantic relation that also determines the classical understanding of synecdoche which, as a linguistic device, designates a whole that has substituted its parts. Hegemonic relations can henceforth be scrutinized with reference to three tropological movements: the metonymic combination of particular signs in chains of equivalences, the metaphoric substitution of these signs under a universalized meaning, and the synecdochic representation of this universalized meaning by an empty signifier that has transcended its particular meaning. 6.2.3

Antagonism

Laclau’s rhetorical remarks provide invaluable steps for investigating the tropological movements that govern semantic relations in the social realm. While he elaborates on differential and equivalential relations when discussing metonymy and metaphor as well as on hegemonic relations when bringing synecdoche into the picture, Laclau stops short of scrutinizing ontic antagonism as a semantic relation, which, however, is essential for understanding how meaning emerges in a particular discourse. Equivalential chains are united in their common opposition against a particular antagonistic discourse, which makes the analysis of antagonistic relations crucial for understanding the semantic structure of discourses. Following Laclau’s introduction of rhetorical categories into

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social theory, I suggest to depict ontic antagonism in terms of antithetical relations, which also have a tropological function. In antithetical relations, figural meanings emerge from the differentiation of two oppositional propositions. Antithesis, however, is generally not only linked to semantic opposition but also to syntactical parallelism. That is, two antithetical propositions are required to be structured in a syntactical similar manner (Fahnestock 1999, 49; 2011, 232; Lloyd 1911, 288). Harris convincingly expounds how this syntactical criterion should be omitted, making clear that while antithetical propositions can be emphasized by syntactical parallelism, the latter does not operate as a defining criterion for antithesis (Harris 2019, 18). Here again, Teubert aptly reminds us that as long as people are not restricted in how they express the semantic relations in question (Teubert 2019, 144–45), syntactical parallelism only restricts legitimate antithetical relations to syntactical matters. Syntactical parallelism, however, is not only problematic when analyzing semantic oppositions that are structured in utterly different ways, but also small syntactical features could defy the criteria for pure antithesis. For instance, as long as people are free to choose their words, there will always be the case that people insert or leave out words from otherwise parallel sentence structures. However, if these small deviations do not eliminate antithetical relations altogether, the argument can hardly be held that syntactical parallelism produces antithesis in the first place (Harris 2019, 19). Hence, antithesis should be conceived as denoting semantic opposition and therefore joins metonymy, metaphor, and synecdoche in designating tropological movements that allow us to analyze differential, equivalential, hegemonic, and antagonistic relations. 6.2.4

Dislocation

Tropological movements, by definition, substitute literal meanings with figural ones. An important aspect, however, has been hardly touched upon. While metonymy, metaphor, synecdoche, and antithesis impose figural meanings, the literal meaning they attempt to substitute remains unreachable. These rhetorical relations, therefore, are not merely tropological but catachrestic as their literal meanings remain absent. In metonymy, meaning is produced through the combination of signifiers in differential relations, which means that meaning only emerges in relations of difference and cannot be grasped outside of metonymic relations. Meaning does not exist independently of metonymic combinations, but

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the figural meaning produced through metonymy is the only possible meaning. At the same time, metonymic differentiation is always subverted by metaphoric movements in relations of equivalence, such that signifiers remain split between their particular meaning and the universalized meaning of the equivalential chain (Laclau 2001b, 247). Moreover, even though signifiers cease their particular meanings in metaphoric relations, processes of metaphoric totalization will always be contaminated by traces of metonymic differentiation since otherwise, metaphoric analogy would collapse into identity. Elements of the equivalential chain would not merely be analogous substitutes but identical to each other, losing every trace of their particular meaning (Laclau 2001b, 247). Empty signifiers further can only present the illusion of completely constituted discourses, without ever reaching complete identity, such that synecdochic representation remains an incomplete process in which a particular signifier only provisionally acquires the function of representing the universalized meaning of the equivalential chain (Laclau 2000a, 79; 2001b, 247; 2005b, 72). Antithetical relations, finally, presuppose an ontic understanding of antagonism which leaves aside matters of radical antagonism. Every construction of an antagonistic other merely presents a fraction of the infinity of antagonistic relations that could potentially be constructed. Moreover, in antithesis, discourses cannot neatly be demarcated, as this presupposes that discourses could be completely constituted. Antithetical discourses then do not stand in the relation of mere opposition, but they mutually contaminate each other, which is reflected in their antagonistic character. Nevertheless, although the borders between antagonistic discourses remain permeable, antithetical relations are based on the illusion of two oppositional discourses that remain principally stable, given that the antagonistic discourse does not interfere, e.g., through the exposure to contagious diseases. The tropological movements of metonymy, metaphor, synecdoche, and antithesis are hence distorted processes, being subject to the fundamentally catachrestic character of discursive structures. Catachresis then, although classically understood as a linguistic device, is inherent in every trope and thus “cannot be one figure among others, but becomes synonymous with the very principle of rhetoricity” (Laclau 2005a, 49; also 2004, 306; 2005b, 71). It is a testament to the permanently dislocated nature of discursive structures that renders impossible the constitution of a pure literal meaning.

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A Guide for Analysis

It has become clear that linguistics and rhetoric are not only structured in a homologous manner, but as semantic relations are necessarily tropological, “the rhetorical is from the very beginning inscribed in the constitution of the linguistic as such” (Laclau 2012, 240; also 2006a, 106). Rhetoric must furthermore not be understood as the analysis of concrete linguistic devices, but the foregoing elaborations made visible how semantic relations are generally structured in a rhetorical way. Language, and hence every semantic system, is structured rhetorically and it is these rhetorical relations that we need to investigate when making sense of articulatory processes. Proceeding from mere semantic to rhetorical analysis is fundamental when taking the tropological character of semantic relations seriously. This has crucial implications for an analysis that operates with Laclauian theory as it provides us with means to identify and interpret semantic relations in terms of the following rhetorical categories: metonymy, metaphor, synecdoche, antithesis, and catachresis. Metonymy. The identification of metonymic relations is a fundamental step in every rhetorical analysis as it reveals how relevant signifiers are articulated in a discourse. Meaning is neither internal to signifiers nor is it predetermined, but it only emerges through relations of differential combination. These combinatory relations are not necessarily syntactical, but signifiers are first and foremost linked through semantic cohesion. As it remains impossible to achieve completely constituted meanings due to the permanently dislocated character of the social, meaning always remains partial and hence figural. It is therefore possible to analyze differential relations in terms of metonymy, which designates that signifiers are related in contiguity while their particular discursive positions remain visible. We can thus trace the differential constitution of relevant signifiers through an analysis of metonymic relations. Metaphor. Meaning is not only constituted based on differential relations, but every meaning emerges through the interplay of difference and equivalence. In an equivalential relation, signifiers cease their particular meaning as they are united under the universalized meaning of an empty signifier that purports to represent the whole equivalential chain. An equivalential relation is hence metaphoric because its terms become partially substitutable for one another, each representing the whole chain. For instance, when examining how the United States was constructed during the Coronavirus Crisis, the articulation proceeded

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along the lines of healthcare excellence and superiority, preparedness and resilience, economic strength and superiority, economic growth and prosperity, economic and political independence, military strength, and national security. While the United States served as the empty signifier that unites the equivalential chain, each of these terms was constructed as a major characteristic of the United States and became partially substitutable for the latter. Metaphor thus plays a crucial role in the constitution of meaning. However, we must not forget that equivalential relations do not eradicate differential meaning altogether, but metonymy always shades into metaphor and renders metaphoric totalization incomplete. Synecdoche. Following Laclau, hegemony describes a relation “by which a certain particular content overflows its own particularity and becomes the incarnation of the absent fullness of society” (Laclau 1995, 89). It includes the construction of an empty signifier that emerges from an equivalential chain, ceases its particular meaning, and purports to represent the whole chain. As every signifier is essentially inadequate to fulfill this function, the universalized meaning is always figural and hence synecdochic. Hegemonic relations are present in every equivalential formation and require recourse to the previously discussed categories of metonymy and metaphor. Three tropological movements are important when analyzing hegemonic relations: the metonymic combination of differential signifiers in an equivalential chain, the metaphoric substitution of these signifiers under a universalized meaning, and the synecdochic representation of this universalized meaning by an empty signifier that denominates the whole chain by transcending its particular meaning. Antithesis. Equivalential relations are formed through a common opposition against an antagonistic other, which makes it necessary to analyze how antagonistic relations can be expressed as a rhetorical category. Antithesis fulfills this function as it designates semantic opposition, which is not restricted to cases of syntactical parallelism but can be found across phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. In the analysis of the Coronavirus Crisis, it could clearly be observed how antagonistic relations between the United States and China were constructed through semantic opposition as Trump claimed that China presents a threat to the United States’ healthcare, economy, political independence, and relative military strength through its economic practices and the influence it wields in the United States. Supported by harsh tariffs and restrictive Executive Orders, China was constructed as a threatening enemy that must be sanctioned and expelled in order to regain an idealized U.S. identity.

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Catachresis. Metonymy, metaphor, synecdoche, and antithesis have a tropological character because they substitute literal meanings with figural ones. In each of these rhetorical categories, the permanent and recurring dislocation of discursive structures comes to the fore since the absent literal meaning remains unreachable. Differential, equivalential, hegemonic, and antagonistic relations are hence necessarily catachrestic. Instead of analyzing the permanently and recurringly dislocated nature of the social individually, we have to search for it in the previously discussed rhetorical relations: (1) Meaning is only constituted through differential relations, such that the figural meaning that is produced in metonymic combinations is the only meaning we have, even though it remains necessarily partial since it cannot encompass an infinity of potential differential relations. (2) Differential meanings are never completely eliminated in equivalential relations, because this would mean that metaphoric analogy collapses into identity where equivalential elements are no longer substitutable but identical to each other. (3) Moreover, empty signifiers can only purport to denominate complete and stable discourses as they remain inadequate to represent the entire equivalential chain. Synecdochic representation therefore always remains incomplete. (4) Finally, antithetical relations only cover matters of ontic antagonism and presuppose semantic opposition. This neglects that every articulation of an antagonistic other feeds on a radical dimension of antagonism, i.e., an infinity of potential antagonistic relations. Moreover, it remains an illusion that discourses stand in neat opposition to each other because discursive boundaries are permeable and antagonistic elements are always present within supposedly stable discourses. Permanent dislocation is hence revealed in the partial character of every differential meaning, the impossibility of complete metaphoric totalization in equivalential relations, the inadequacy of empty signifiers to represent complete identities in hegemonic relations, and the illusionary character of antagonistic oppositions. Against this background, it also becomes possible to analyze ephemeral dislocation, that is, disruptions of sedimented discursive structures, as well as processes of institutionalization. In order to do so, it is necessary to trace regularity, repetition, and variation in the corpus, rendering visible how semantic relations have been temporarily disrupted, continuously reproduced, or transformed in the long term. Rhetoric henceforth provides us with the necessary guidance for close reading as, based on rhetorical relations, we are able to make sense of those paraphrases that we identify in concordance analyses.

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Note 1. The governmental discourse on the Covid-19 pandemic is analyzed as portraying a largely coherent picture on the governmental construction of the Coronavirus Crisis in the United States. However, it must be recognized that, of course, discrepancies within Donald Trump’s administration existed, such as the increasing tensions between Trump and Anthony Fauci who served as his medical advisor in the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

References Anthony, Laurence. 2022. AntConc. Tokyo. Accessed September 14, 2022. https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/antconc/. Baker, Paul. 2012. “Acceptable Bias? Using Corpus Linguistics Methods with Critical Discourse Analysis.” Critical Discourse Studies 9 (3): 247–256. Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos, Majid Khosravinik, Michał Krzyzanowski, ˙ Tony McEnery, and Ruth Wodak. 2008. “A Useful Methodological Synergy? Combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to Examine Discourses of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press.” Discourse & Society 19 (3): 273–306. Barnbrook, Geoff, Oliver Mason, and Ramesh Krishnamurthy. 2013. Collocation: Applications and Implications. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Barthes, Roland. (1957) 1991. Mythologies. New York: The Noonday Press. Bleiker, Roland, ed. 2018. Visual Global Politics. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Dzudzek, Iris, Georg Glasze, Annika Mattissek, and Henning Schirmel. 2009. “Verfahren der lexikometrischen Analyse von Textkorpora.” In Handbuch Diskurs und Raum: Theorien und Methoden für die Humangeographie sowie die sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Raumforschung, edited by Georg Glasze and Annika Mattissek, 233–60. Bielefeld: transcript. Fahnestock, Jeanne. 1999. Rhetorical Figures in Science. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fahnestock, Jeanne. 2011. Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Firth, John Rupert. 1957. “Modes of Meaning.” In Papers in Linguistics 1934– 1951, edited by John Rupert Firth, 190–215. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Glasze, Georg. 2007. “Vorschläge zur Operationalisierung der Diskurstheorie von Laclau und Mouffe in einer Triangulation von lexikometrischen und interpretativen Methoden.” Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung 8 (2): 1–36.

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Glynos, Jason, David Howarth, Aletta Norval, and Ewen Speed. 2009. “Discourse Analysis: Varieties and Methods.” ESRC National Centre for Research Methods NCRM/014. Harris, Randy Allen. 2019. “The Fourth Master Trope, Antithesis.” Advances in the History of Rhetoric 22 (1): 1–26. Jakobson, Roman. 1971. “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances.” In Studies on Child Language and Aphasia, edited by Roman Jakobson, 49–73. The Hague and Paris: Mouton. Jørgensen, Marianne, and Louise Phillips. 2002. Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London: SAGE. Laclau, Ernesto. 1995. “The Time Is out of Joint.” Diacritics 25 (2): 85–96. Laclau, Ernesto. 1996. “The Death and Resurrection of the Theory of Ideology.” Journal of Political Ideologies 1 (3): 201–220. Laclau, Ernesto. 2000a. “Identity and Hegemony: The Role of Universality in the Constitution of Political Logics.” In Contingency, Hegemony, Universality, edited by Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Žižek, 44–89. London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto. 2000b. “Structure, History and the Political.” In Contingency, Hegemony, Universality, edited by Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Žižek, 182–212. London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto. 2001a. “Democracy and the Question of Power.” Constellations 38 (1): 3–14. Laclau, Ernesto. 2001b. “The Politics of Rhetoric.” In Material Events: Paul de Man and the Afterlife of Theory, edited by Tom Cohen, Barbara Cohen, J. H. Miller, and Andrzej Warminski, 229–53. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Laclau, Ernesto. 2004. “Glimpsing the Future.” In Laclau: A Critical Reader, edited by Simon Critchley and Oliver Marchart, 279–328. London and New York: Routledge. Laclau, Ernesto. 2005a. “Heterogeneity and Post-Modernity.” Revista Brasileira De Literatura Comparada 7 (7): 39–50. Laclau, Ernesto. 2005b. On Populist Reason. New York: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto. 2006. “Ideology and Post-Marxism.” Journal of Political Ideologies 11 (2): 103–114. Laclau, Ernesto. (2007) 2014. “Articulation and the Limits of Metaphor.” In The Rhetorical Foundations Of Society, edited by Ernesto Laclau, 53–78. London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto. 2012. “Afterword: Language, Discourse, and Rhetoric.” In Language, Ideology, and the Human: New Interventions, edited by Sanja Bahun and Du.šan Radunovi´c, 237–246. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. (1985) 2001. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.

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Lloyd, Alfred H. 1911. “The Logic of Antithesis.” The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 8 (11): 281–289. McEnery, Tony, and Andrew Hardie. 2012. Corpus Linguistics: Method, Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nabers, Dirk. 2015. A Poststructuralist Discourse Theory of Global Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Nonhoff, Martin. 2007. “Politische Diskursanalyse als Hegemonieanalyse.” In Diskurs - Radikale Demokratie - Hegemonie: Zum politischen Denken von Ernesto Laclau und Chantal Mouffe, edited by Martin Nonhoff, 173–94. Bielefeld: transcript. Nymalm, Nicola. 2020. From ‘Japan Problem’ to ‘China Threat’? Rising Powers in US Economic Discourse. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Saussure, Ferdinand de. (1916) 1959. Course in General Linguistics. New York: Philosophical Library. Shim, David. 2014. Visual Politics and North Korea: Seeing is Believing. London and New York: Routledge. Teubert, Wolfgang. (1999) 2007. “Corpus Linguistics and Lexicography.” In Text Corpora and Multilingual Lexicography, edited by Wolfgang Teubert, 109–33. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Teubert, Wolfgang. 2004. “Language and Corpus Linguistics.” In Lexicology and Corpus Linguistics: An Introduction, edited by M. A. K. Halliday, Wolfgang ˇ Teubert, Colin Yallop, and Anna Cermáková, 73–112. New York and London: Continuum. Teubert, Wolfgang. 2005. “My Version of Corpus Linguistics.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 10 (1): 1–13. Teubert, Wolfgang. 2019. “Corpus Linguistics: Widening the Remit.” In Corpus Linguistics, Context and Culture, edited by Viola Wiegand and Michaela Mahlberg, 137–161. Berlin: De Gruyter. Walton, Sara, and Bronwyn Boon. 2014. “Engaging with a Laclau & Mouffe Informed Discourse Analysis: A Proposed Framework.” Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management 9 (4): 351–370. Weldes, Jutta. 1999. Constructing National Interests: The United States and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. White House. 2021. “News.” Accessed November 02, 2001. https://trumpwhit ehouse.archives.gov/news/.

CHAPTER 7

The Coronavirus Crisis

An abundance of crisis constructions revolves around the Covid-19 pandemic such that we cannot legitimately speak of one Coronavirus Crisis, but diverse constructions exist that frame the Coronavirus Crisis in diverse ways. These constructions not only differ in terms of content, accentuating individual health consequences, healthcare capacities, or economic recession, but it is also far from clear when the Coronavirus Crisis started and whether it has already been left behind. When analyzing the governmental construction of the Coronavirus Crisis in the United States, we are hence confronted with one particular construction that despite, or because, of its hegemonic character has been an object of contestation.1

7.1 The Coronavirus Crisis as Ephemeral Dislocation In order to get an initial grasp of how the discourse around the Coronavirus Crisis is structured, the corpus linguistic method of frequency analysis provides first insights. It allows us to analyze the structural makeup of the corpus by identifying signifiers that appear frequently. Thereby, word lists of frequent signifiers are generated whereby occurrences of rare and unique signifiers are excluded since while the latter contribute to the overall structure of the discourse, they are of minor © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 N. Klopf, Global Crisis, Global Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25140-5_7

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importance for analyzing how the corpus is generally structured. Having cleaned the results of irrelevant words, such as prepositions, conjunctions, and pronouns, it becomes possible to identify key signifiers in the structural makeup of the corpus. This reveals that three policy areas appear frequently, each of which will prove relevant for the construction of the Coronavirus Crisis: healthcare, economy, and defense (see Table 7.1). Frequency analysis is further useful for scrutinizing which position the Covid-19 pandemic acquires in the governmental discourse in the course of Trump’s presidency. As a first step, an analysis is made of how often Covid-19 is addressed by determining the added frequencies of those signifiers that are commonly used when speaking of it (see Fig. 7.1). Frequency analysis, however, remains an approximation that cannot give us a complete picture of every instance the Covid19 pandemic is addressed since it relies on counting pregiven search terms. The latter, therefore, were determined to capture the Covid-19 pandemic as accurately as possible by including occurrences of Corona* and Covid* as well as the general term virus which is frequently used to refer to the Coronavirus. Even though it is also used to define other viruses, such as HIV or MERS, these occurrences appear to a much lesser extent. A number of additional search terms was further excluded, such as pandemic, disease, and references to enemy, plague, and scourge. This is necessary because these terms would have resulted in multiple results not related to Covid-19. Frequency analysis, finally, cannot capture those references where the Covid-19 pandemic is either addressed through pronouns or only mentioned implicitly when dealing with related topics such as testing, personal protective equipment, hospital Table 7.1 Frequent words in U.S. governmental statements, 01/2020– 01/2021 (categorized) Healthcare 2736 2734 1591 1508 1322 1305 1285

Economy Testing Health Hospital/s Tests Healthcare Ventilators Vaccine

4736 3330 2167 1457 1380 1369 1353

Defense Job/s Work Business/es Workers Money Companies Economy

2512 1844 1176 1141 872 800 765

China Security Military Protect Border Foreign Defense

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1500 1250 1000 750 500 250 0 Jan 20 Feb 20 Mar 20 Apr 20 May 20 Jun 20 Jul 20 Aug 20 Sep 20 Oct 20 Nov 20 Dec 20 Jan 21 Frequency

Jan 20 Feb 20 Mar 20 Apr 20 May 20 Jun 20 Jul 20 Aug 20 Sep 20 Oct 20 Nov 20 Dec 20 Jan 21 67 114 1461 1278 613 445 628 455 251 90 81 161 31

Fig. 7.1 Covid-19 in U.S. governmental statements, 01/2020–01/2021

capacity, or economic impacts. Nonetheless, although frequency analysis both restricts and conflates references to the Covid-19 pandemic, it provides an indication of its position in the general governmental discourse. This, of course, cannot be a standalone method, but must subsequently be interpreted. The frequency analysis reveals an interesting picture when comparing how often the Covid-19 pandemic is addressed in governmental statements during Trump’s presidency. Although Trump has already been briefed about the spread of the Coronavirus in January 2020, references to Covid-19 remain scarce until March. This points towards a deliberate marginalization of the Coronavirus which is reinforced when considering Trump’s comments during these months. In his comment on an early warning that the Coronavirus could spread in the United States, Trump, in retrospect, attaches little importance to this notice, contending that it “was of no really [sic] import”.2 This reflects his response to the emerging Covid-19 pandemic that, particularly during the early months of January and February, revolves around the continuation of sedimented discursive structures which are sought to be defended from potential disruptions. Leaving the Coronavirus unnoticed presents a simplified way of not engaging with any rupture that looms as a threat to illusions of perfect health and unwavering economic strength. If addressed, Trump makes reassurances that not only is the United States “in very good shape”, but the Coronavirus is “handled very well”3 and is “very well under control”.4 These statements are coupled with further reassurances from various members of Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force that generally, the Coronavirus poses a low risk to the American public.5 This becomes particularly intricate when assurances of low risk

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not only concern risks of serious health consequences but the risk of infection in general.6 If the Coronavirus is articulated as principally harmless, it neither presents a threat to public health, nor does it necessitate any measures that would induce socio-economic ruptures. Despite these marginalizing moves within the United States, the Coronavirus acquires a somewhat different meaning as long as it remains outside of U.S. borders. This becomes perhaps most accentuated in Trump’s travel restriction which he issued on January 31, 2020 that suspended entry for individuals that have been present in China in the previous two weeks, except for U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Arguing that it is impossible to monitor all passengers coming in from China, the travel ban was established to prevent further transmission which could overwhelm the American healthcare system, inducing “cascading public health, economic, national security, and societal consequences”.7 The Coronavirus hence is articulated as potentially threatening sedimented structures if individuals incoming from China spark transmission. At the same time, however, existing infections within the United States are marginalized, and mitigation measures to halt domestic transmission are only implemented belatedly. Early responses to the emerging Covid-19 pandemic are thus characterized by containment efforts, aimed at the prevention of external transmission, while potential domestic mitigation, which would induce socio-economic ruptures, founders on assurances of preparedness and resilience. The simultaneous articulation of the Coronavirus as externally threatening but internally harmless is also reflected in other early containment efforts, such as airport screenings and mandatory quarantines for incoming travelers, funneling of incoming flights through selected airports to support monitoring, case recognition, isolation, and contract tracing in case of suspected infections, as well as travel advisories for outgoing travelers.8 These preventative measures are deemed necessary due to unknowns related to the incubation period, speed of transmissibility, asymptomatic transmission, and severity.9 Despite this recognition that the Coronavirus confronts the United States with unknown, potentially threatening challenges, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar ensures that within the United States, the “risk is low of transmissibility, the risk of contracting the disease is low”.10 Accordingly, Americans are encouraged to “go on with their normal lives”,11 although Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Robert Redfield makes clear that it might be wise to “prepare themselves

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and their families”12 for the spread of the Coronavirus. Again, responses to the emerging Covid-19 pandemic aim at containment rather than mitigation, leaving sedimented discursive structures intact. The Coronavirus is marginalized within the United States but articulated as dangerous in case of incoming transmission, such that responses aim at keeping “the virus, and those carrying the infections, from entering our country”.13 This becomes particularly clear in Trump’s statement on February 29, 2020: “Border security is also health security. In our efforts to keep America safe, my administration has taken the most aggressive action in modern history to control our borders and protect Americans from the coronavirus.”14 The foundation for translocatory practices is established here as the articulation of an ephemeral crisis requires the construction of an externally threatened identity. In spite of recurring efforts to preserve the portrayal of U.S. resilience and invulnerability, towards the end of February 2020, members of the Coronavirus Task Force raise concerned voices regarding the spread and serious health consequences of the Coronavirus. It is expected that infection numbers will rise in the United States while, at the same time, it has become clear that elderly individuals and those with underlying conditions can face severe health impacts in case of infection.15 Despite these warnings, Trump contends that the spread of the Coronavirus is not inevitable, especially when considering his containment efforts.16 Nevertheless, as the possibility remains that the Coronavirus could spread in the United States, Trump ensures that the United States is prepared to handle potentially increasing infection numbers, asserting that “regardless of what happens, we are totally prepared”.17 At the same time, tentative mitigation considerations are articulated by members of the Coronavirus Task Force which, however, do not yet interfere with the continuation of existing socio-economic practices. Towards the end of February 2020, Anthony Fauci, for instance, underlines the importance of “everyday sensible measures”18 such as covering your cough, staying at home when sick, and washing hands. In early March 2020, Mike Pence also advocates expanded hygiene measures like staying at home when sick, avoiding close contact with sick individuals, avoiding touching your face, as well as cleaning and disinfecting frequently.19 These concessions, however, are accompanied by Pence’s recurring assurances that, generally, the risk of contracting the Coronavirus remains low to the American public, again understating the seriousness of the Coronavirus within the United States.20 Nonetheless,

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with rising infection numbers, in early March, the emerging Covid-19 pandemic increasingly begins to be articulated as posing a challenge to the United States that cannot be resolved by containment efforts alone. Acknowledging serious health consequences for elderly individuals and those with preexisting conditions, Fauci and Pence recommend preventative social distancing measures for vulnerable individuals, such as avoiding traveling and crowded places.21 Mitigating the spread of the Coronavirus through hygiene measures is further articulated as important for shielding those individuals that are most vulnerable to the Coronavirus, even though the risk to the general public is expected to remain low.22 These developments in the construction of the Covid-19 pandemic reveal an interesting movement towards the emergence of the Coronavirus Crisis in the governmental discourse in the United States. In the early months of January and February, as well as at the beginning of March 2020, we encounter a marginalization of the Coronavirus which despite increasing infection numbers and severe developments in other countries, is largely articulated as harmless within the United States, with the exception of elderly individuals and those with underlying health conditions. Americans are generally encouraged to continue their daily routines, although tentative mitigation recommendations are articulated towards the end of February that aim at sheltering vulnerable individuals from contracting the Coronavirus. These developments somewhat undermine the early differentiation that the Coronavirus is externally threatening but within the United States principally harmless. Responses to the emerging Covid-19 pandemic hence have developed from mere containment to first mitigation efforts which, nonetheless, are not directed at disrupting existing socio-economic practices for the general public. In spite of the recognition that increasing transmission poses a challenge to the United States, the Coronavirus has not yet been articulated as disrupting sedimented discursive structures but promises of U.S. preparedness and resilience purport to withstand the Covid-19 pandemic without significant disruptions. The period until the early days of March 2020 thus does not designate the onset of the Coronavirus Crisis in the governmental discourse in the United States but only the development towards its construction.

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The Construction of the Coronavirus Crisis

The Coronavirus Crisis is generally approached as a period of significant socio-economic disruption that is in principle possible to overcome. It thus does not present an everlasting phenomenon, although its impacts might subsist for a prolonged time. That is, long-term health consequences and persisting socio-economic hardship can exceed the immediate construction of the Coronavirus Crisis. An analysis of this temporary construction is hence concerned with the societal disruptions it is associated with. This reflects an ephemeral dimension of dislocation which revolves around disruptions in sedimented social structures, traditional channels of behavior, and naturalized norms, rules, and beliefs. The analysis of the Coronavirus Crisis through the lens of ephemeral dislocation further not only sheds light on its temporary construction, but it also paves the way towards an analysis of its underlying structural conditions, captured in a recurring and permanent dimension of dislocation. The following analysis will be guided by relevant methodical considerations that allow us to systematically scrutinize the articulation of the Coronavirus Crisis in the governmental discourse in the United States. The construction of the Coronavirus Crisis as a temporarily limited period of significant socio-economic hardship must first be analyzed in light of the ephemeral dimension of dislocation which designates ruptures in sedimented discursive structures. Accordingly, the Coronavirus Crisis, as an ephemeral construction, denotes disruptions in those discursive structures that have become sedimented in the governmental discourse in the United States, that is, which have characterized the American selfidentification principally unquestioned for an extended period of time. The emergence of these ruptures, however, presupposes that the U.S. discourse is essentially deficient and never utterly stabilized, since otherwise, discursive structures could not be disrupted. If we were confronted with a completely constituted discourse, meanings would be fixed, and alternative articulations would be ruled out. The ephemeral construction of the Coronavirus Crisis thus must be analyzed against the background of the permanent incompletion of meaning, that is, permanent ontological dislocation, as well as its manifestation in recurringly deficient processes of identification that reflect the recurring ontic dimension of dislocation. Ephemeral dislocation hence does not induce destabilization into an otherwise stable discourse, but it designates disruptions of sedimented

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social structures that are already only relatively stabilized. This relative stabilization entails an act of concealment through which their contingent character becomes obliterated and their permanent incompletion vanishes behind the illusion of complete constitution, reflected in processes of naturalization and stabilization (Laclau 1990, 34). Ephemeral disruptions, then, do not merely denote discontinuities in naturalized social structures, but they must be understood as disclosing the latter’s contingent character. The Coronavirus Crisis, therefore, also designates the disclosure of the contingent nature of sedimented discursive structures in the governmental discourse in the United States, and hence accentuates structural deficiencies that have preceded the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is in this sense that the Coronavirus Crisis encompasses a revelatory function in that it discloses the fundamentally incomplete character of American self-identification. In order to analyze the Coronavirus Crisis in light of ephemeral dislocation, it hence becomes necessary to scrutinize disruptions in the sedimented self-portrayal of the United States as well as disclosed structural deficiencies in the U.S. governmental discourse. An analysis of ephemeral dislocation is thereby impossible without making recourse to matters of recurring and permanent dislocation. Despite marginalizing endeavors in the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, aiming at the continuation of sedimented discursive structures, first cracks in the United States’ sedimented self-portrayal can be observed towards the mid of March 2020. Regarding potential economic impacts from the emerging Covid-19 pandemic, Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow admits that, even though the U.S. economy is generally strong, “there are going to be problems ahead”.23 Regarding healthcare consequences, in a memorandum issued on March 11, it is further acknowledged that “public health experts anticipate shortages in the supply of personal respiratory devices (respirators) available for use by healthcare workers in mitigating further transmission of COVID19”.24 The domestically threatening character of the Coronavirus is finally accentuated in declaring the Covid-19 pandemic a national emergency on March 13, where Trump alerts us that “[t]he spread of COVID-19 within our Nation’s communities threatens to strain our Nation’s healthcare systems”.25 Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic is not merely articulated as potentially disrupting healthcare capacities, but it also “has the potential to cause severe consequences for our country’s national and economic

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security”.26 The disruptive impacts of the Coronavirus Crisis are hence located in three categories: healthcare, economy, and national defense, which will guide the following analysis. 7.1.2

Healthcare

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, the United States is constructed as being prepared to handle existing public health and economic concerns as well as potential challenges ahead. Already in the development towards the Coronavirus Crisis, assurances of preparedness are given to leave sedimented discursive structures intact, ensuring that daily life can continue as the Coronavirus is articulated as principally harmless to the general public. In late January 2020, Azar assures that “the world’s best public healthcare system, infrastructure, and professionals” are working “to keep this from being an issue that would be of concern for you—to keep the risk low”.27 Towards the end of February 2020, Trump, in a similar way, links praises for “the greatest experts in the world”28 to assurances of preparedness, should the Coronavirus spread in the United States, claiming that “our country is prepared for any circumstance”.29 These promises of preparedness and healthcare excellence can be interpreted as attempts at marginalizing looming socio-economic hardships, continuing with sedimented constructions of the United States such as unwavering public health and sufficient healthcare capacity. As these identifications begin to crack, however, assurances of preparedness take on a secondary function, now also serving to recover those sedimented structures that begin to crumble under the emerging Coronavirus Crisis. In the following months, the United States is continuously associated with preparedness, healthcare excellence, and resilience, regularly coupled with claims of American superiority (see Fig. 7.2). In early March 2020, Trump contends that the United States is “best prepared in the world to address any threat or challenge” which is reflected in his efforts “to protect Americans from the coronavirus”.30 In a similar vein, Trump insists that “[n]o nation is more prepared or more resilient than the United States” because it has “the best economy, the most advanced healthcare, and the most talented doctors, scientists, and researchers anywhere in the world”.31 These promises continue throughout the pandemic, but while during March, Trump directly articulates that “no country is better prepared to fight this pandemic than the United States”32 due to its healthcare excellence, these praises get more concrete

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in the course of the pandemic as he stresses the superior position of testing capacity, testing quality, and ventilator quality in the United States.33 This construction of American healthcare excellence also continues to be regularly linked to statements that the United States is home to the best researchers and healthcare professionals who are tasked with confronting the Covid-19 pandemic.34 The United States is accordingly characterized by “the best science, the best modeling, and the best medical research there is anywhere on Earth”35 which not only guides decisions in tackling the pandemic, but also informs the reopening of the American economy. This assertion of American healthcare superiority is also reflected when the resilient character of the American population is addressed as Trump claims that “Americans are the strongest and most resilient people on Earth”36 that will overcome the pandemic and successfully recover its previous strength. These constructions of unwavering public health, preparedness, and healthcare excellence, however, begin to crumble in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic. Although assurances subsist that the Coronavirus poses a low risk to the general public, with emerging knowledge on asymptomatic spread, the Coronavirus is articulated differently.37 While its principally harmless character has been linked to low risks of contraction in the beginning of the pandemic, in March 2020, Pence starts to reiterate that the Coronavirus poses a low risk of serious illness to the general public as except from elderly individuals and those with underlying health conditions, most people will have mild symptoms and will recover.38 He thereby integrates the knowledge on asymptomatic spread 300

Frequency

250 200 150 100 50 0 Jan 20 Feb 20 Mar 20 Apr 20 May 20 Jun 20 Jul 20 Aug 20 Sep 20 Oct 20 Nov 20 Dec 20 Jan 21 Strength

Preparedness

Independence

Fig. 7.2 Frequent characteristics of the United States in U.S. governmental statements, 01/2020–01/2021

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into the governmental discourse while keeping the construction of unwavering public health intact to a substantial extent. Potential severe courses are reduced to a vulnerable fringe group, which allows to integrate the material circumstance of serious health consequences as a differential, non-antagonistic element in the governmental discourse on the Covid19 pandemic that does not stand in conflict with general assurances of low risk. The most substantial disruptions to socio-economic practices, however, are associated with the implementation of mitigation measures in the United States. In order to slow the spread of the Coronavirus and “limit the damage to our people and our country”,39 Trump recognizes the necessity to take preventative mitigation measures, and urges to follow the CDC guidelines on the Coronavirus. Although the risk of serious health consequences is articulated as low for the majority of the American population, precautions are necessary to shield vulnerable individuals from infections.40 This argument guides the implementation of mitigation measures and warrants disruptions to socio-economic practices. Thereby, the general construction of unwavering public health can be maintained since mitigation measures are not articulated as necessary to protect the general public but elderly individuals and those with preexisting health conditions. Hence, while mitigation measures disrupt socio-economic practices, they do not stand in contrast to constructions of perfect health, and thus can be integrated, at least temporarily, into the governmental discourse on the Covid-19 pandemic. National mitigation guidelines are finally implemented on March 16, 2020, which reinforces previous developments towards domestic mitigation. It is henceforth recommended to work or engage in schooling from home, avoid discretionary travel and social gatherings of more than ten people, and use pickup or delivery services instead of eating and drinking at bars, restaurants, and food courts. At the same time, recommendations for practicing good hygiene like washing hands, avoiding touching your face, disinfecting frequently, and staying home if sick or vulnerable are maintained.41 These guidelines are formulated as recommendations rather than obligations, leaving open the possibility not to put them into practices if not otherwise bound to state or local guidelines. At the national level, Trump hence only belatedly implements mitigation measures that remain fairly loose and must be viewed against state and local decisions that, if formulated more strictly, induce more substantial disruptions to socio-economic practices. The implementation of national

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mitigation guidelines, nevertheless, has significant socio-economic consequences by guiding the general disposition towards domestic mitigation in the United States. Rather than recommending continuing with undisrupted daily routines, people are frequently urged to follow these guidelines in order to reduce transmissions, protect vulnerable individuals, and get the United States back on track to recovery.42 Disruptions to sedimented social practices are hence articulated openly as Americans are urged to reduce their social interactions, “putting their lives, their careers, their educations, and their dreams on hold out of devotion to their follow citizens and to their country”.43 At the end of March 2020, Pence finally reckons that mitigation measures do not merely shield vulnerable individuals from infections, but they also serve to relieve the crumbling illusion of sufficient healthcare capacity, as putting the guidelines into practice will also “limit the burden on our hospitals and our healthcare system”.44 This reveals how the American society is in fact permanently dislocated despite efforts to uphold an idealized articulation around healthcare excellence and preparedness. Promises of preparedness and sufficient healthcare capacity are not only revealed as illusionary due to increasing infection and hospitalization numbers, limited testing capacities, and shortages in medical supplies such as personal protective equipment and ventilators, but Azar openly acknowledges that “any pandemic like this runs the risk of exceeding our healthcare system capacity”.45 This necessitates precautions beyond mitigation measures to preserve healthcare capacities in the United States, such as limiting testing to healthcare professionals and symptomatic individuals46 as well as instructions to postpone elective medical procedures in order to guarantee the availability of testing, personal protective equipment, and medical equipment for healthcare professionals and individuals with severe courses.47 Efforts to preserve healthcare capacity are also reflected in further containments efforts. Towards the end of March 2020, the U.S. borders to Canada and Mexico are closed, preventing the entry of unauthorized immigrants who “threaten to create a perfect storm that would spread the infection to our border agents, migrants, and to the public at large” which “would cripple our immigration system, overwhelm our healthcare system, and severely damage our national security”.48 In a similar way, Azar defends these restrictions as “any resources that we are using to reduce the risk of infection among CBP agents, healthcare workers, and migrants in these facilities are drawing on […] an American

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healthcare system that is already fighting the coronavirus pandemic”.49 Every containment effort certainly reduces the burden on the American healthcare system which is blatantly articulated as strained with the ongoing spread of the Coronavirus and as overburdened if previous social practices and travel arrangements remained in place. However, particularly targeting the entry of unauthorized immigrants takes on a second dimension in that it plays into Trump’s long articulated plan to restrict illegal immigration across the U.S.–Mexican border. Trump also welcomes this development as “with the national emergencies and all of the other things that we’ve declared, we can actually do something about it”50 and address unauthorized immigration, which he views as a decades-long problem. Finally, Trump, as well as members of the Coronavirus Task Force, continuously defend sufficient capacities in testing, personal protective equipment, and medical equipment with the precautions that have been implemented.51 It is only in rare circumstances that shortages are openly articulated as Fauci, for instance, admits that there are insufficient capacities to test symptomatic individuals,52 and Trump acknowledges potential shortages in ventilators in some areas in the United States.53 Predominantly, the United States continues to be articulated as being prepared to confront the Covid-19 pandemic, with healthcare preparedness being assured for healthcare professionals as well as symptomatic and vulnerable individuals. These efforts, however, cannot hide the deficiencies of the American healthcare system as well as its unpreparedness to manage the Covid-19 pandemic. Promises of preparedness, healthcare excellence, and unchallenged public health hence only overshadow the United States’ permanent dislocation and serve as lifelines to keep some sort of stabilization in the light of serious healthcare consequences. Healthcare finally presents a major category which characterizes the self-identification of the United States, and which has become subject to significant ephemeral dislocations in the governmental discourse on the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly concerning aspects of healthcare excellence and superiority, preparedness, as well as resilience. The United States is hence articulated along the following equivalential chain: United States ≈ Healthcare Excellence / Superiority ≈ Preparedness ≈ Resilience

The particular terms are articulated in a metaphoric relation to each other, each representing the universalized meaning of the equivalential chain

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under the name of the United States. While partially retaining their particular meaning of healthcare excellence and superiority, preparedness, and resilience, they also become partially substitutable, serving to represent the United States as a whole. This metaphoric substitution, however, is undermined in times of ephemeral dislocation, that is, through the disruption of sedimented discursive structures which reveal that processes of identification can never constitute stable identities. Metaphoric totalization hence remains incomplete, and it is this incomplete character that the Coronavirus Crisis accentuates. Healthcare excellence and superiority, preparedness, and resilience cease their metaphoric bond and are disclosed as particular differential elements, adduced to construct a particular version of the United States. In the Coronavirus Crisis, their metonymic character hence comes to the fore. This, however, does not imply that the hegemonic construction of the United States crumbles, but if the hegemonic project seeks to persist, it is tasked with recovering from the Coronavirus Crisis, either by incorporating emerging disruptions into the hegemonic discourse, or by excluding certain elements, externalizing disruptions to antagonistic others. 7.1.3

Economy and Defense

The Covid-19 pandemic has further posed significant economic challenges to the United States that are inflicted by the pandemic directly, such as quarantine and sick leave due to infection and illness, but which are also imposed by governmental decisions to mitigate the spread of the Coronavirus, resulting in business shutdowns and reduced working capacity. Already in the development towards the Coronavirus Crisis, Trump identifies the American economy as “the greatest economy anywhere in the world”54 with financial institutions being financially sound, and unemployment numbers plummeting. Against this economic construction of the United States, Trump asserts that “[t]his vast economic prosperity gives us flexibility, reserves, and resources to handle any threat that comes our way”.55 The preparedness of the United States to confront the Covid-19 pandemic is hence not only linked to healthcare excellence but also to economic and financial strength. Disruptions to this economic strength, however, can be encountered with the construction of the Coronavirus Crisis in the U.S. governmental discourse, as Trump reiterates that it is necessary to protect both the health of the American people as well as the American economy from

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impacts imposed by the Coronavirus,56 since the latter “poses an unprecedented risk to the health, wellbeing, and prosperity”57 of the United States. The ephemeral dislocation of American economic strength, superiority, and prosperity is further articulated openly as Trump states that “we had the greatest economy in the history of the world until we got hit by this problem”.58 In a similar way, he claims that “we’ve never had an economy like we had just a few weeks ago, and then it got hit with something that nobody could have ever thought possible”.59 Although the economic challenges that the Covid-19 pandemic inflicts upon the United States are recognized, disruptions to sedimented economic structures, such as rising unemployment numbers, remote working, and closed businesses, are warranted as a deliberate decision that temporarily protects public health. Trump therefore maintains that “we had the greatest economy ever in the history of our world, and I had to turn it off in order to get to a point where we are today”.60 This situation of overt economic disruption, however, is not sought to be upheld for a prolonged time, since it remains destabilizing for preserving economic strength, superiority, and prosperity, such that economic mitigation measures are only supposed to be implemented temporarily.61 Economic hardship is therefore integrated into the governmental discourse as a deliberate and manageable detriment that does not shatter economic strength, superiority, and prosperity, but only puts them on halt for a limited period until the economy would recover. Ephemeral dislocation hence does not necessitate transformation or decaying hegemony, but temporary ruptures can be integrated into the hegemonic discourse without major upheavals. It is therefore not surprising that assurances of economic strength and superiority appear frequently during the course of the Covid-19 pandemic,62 as these constructions have never been dismissed, but their execution has only been suspended. The economic hardship that the Covid-19 pandemic inflicts upon the American economy is further not accepted silently, but through the implementation of several economic countervailing measures, economic disruptions are sought to be alleviated, affecting a sense of stabilization in times of significant economic ruptures. This includes, for instance, paid sick as well as expanded family and medical leave for infected individuals, caregivers, and those affected by school closures under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, as well as the option for employers for federally paid sick leave if they continue to pay their employees.63 Further financial measures are implemented with the Coronavirus Aid, Relief,

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and Economic Security (CARES) Act, including direct cash payments and expanded unemployment benefits for employees, as well as tax credits for businesses, and job retention loans for small businesses under the Paycheck Protection Program which are forgivable given that employees continue to receive their salaries.64 Regarding the educational sector, financial relief measures particularly focus on waived interest on student loans that are held by federal government agencies as well as an option to suspend student loan payments without penalty.65 Finally, the economic distress is revealed drastically in the invocation of the Defense Production Act to regulate the production of medical resources.66 In designating certain medical and personal protective equipment as critical and strategic goods, the government has required private businesses to accept and prioritize the production of medical resources, including ventilators, nasal swabs, and N95 respirators.67 Moreover, Trump has used his authority under the Defense Production Act to restrict the hoarding and ban the export of critical and strategic medical resources.68 These economic measures not only reveal the destabilization and vulnerability of the American economy, but they also disclose the illusion of healthcare preparedness and sufficient healthcare capacity. This makes clear the revelatory function of ephemeral dislocation as economic disruptions expose the permanently dislocated nature of an American identity that is constructed around economic strength and superiority. Trump acknowledges that the American economy, at the present stage, is incapable of producing a sufficient number of medical resources. However, instead of recognizing that complete preparedness and unrivaled economic strength are unattainable, he contends that economic shortages result from the dependence on foreign production. Already at the beginning of March 2020, Trump argues that the Covid-19 pandemic “shows the importance of bringing manufacturing back to America so that we are producing, at home, the medicines and equipment and everything else that we need to protect the public’s health”.69 Economic strength is further directly associated with domestic manufacturing capacities, as Trump claims that “[m]arshalling our economic strength is a key feature of defeating the virus, producing the material supplies and equipment we need”.70 The importance of economic independence for healthcare preparedness in particular, and economic strength in general, is repeated throughout the pandemic. Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro, for instance, puts forward that “[n]ever again should we have to depend on the rest of the world for

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our essential medicines and countermeasures”,71 and Trump reiterates that the pandemic “has underscored the vital importance of reshoring our supply chains and bringing them back into the United States”.72 Trump thereby externalizes the fundamental deficiency of the U.S. economy, seeking an external perpetrator that disturbs American economic strength and superiority. Through this move, the United States is not directly identified with economic destabilization, but the latter is ascribed to an external, antagonistic other. Hence, it is supposed that if the economic dependence on this external perpetrator can be eliminated, complete economic strength becomes attainable since the ontic lack of economic deficiency is attributed to the dependence on foreign production. This neglects that it is not only impossible to build an unchallenged economy due to the unknowns of world politics, but the permanently dislocated character of the American society also renders complete stability impossible—regardless of whether it is sought in healthcare excellence or economic superiority. Economic independence, however, acquires an even broader role in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, being constructed as critical for the political sovereignty and physical survival of the United States, hence being alluded to serving a traditional understanding of national security. Economic independence is thereby integrated into the general construction of the United States, being not merely interlinked with economic strength, political independence, and national survival, but becoming partially substitutable with these terms in an equivalential chain. This becomes particularly visible when Trump insists that: We should never be reliant on a foreign country for the means of our own survival. […] This crisis has underscored just how critical it is to have strong borders and a robust manufacturing sector. […] Our goal for the future must be to have American medicine for American patients, American supplies for American hospitals, and American equipment for our great American heroes. […] Now, both parties must unite to ensure the United States is truly an independent nation in every sense of the word. […] We’re energy independent, manufacturing independence, economic independence, and territorial independence enforced by strong, sovereign borders. America will never be a supplicant nation. We will be a proud, prosperous, independent, and self-reliant nation. We will embrace commerce with all, but we will be dependent on none.73

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The construction of the United States finally encompasses three major categories: healthcare, economy, and defense, which have become subject to significant disruptions in the course of the Coronavirus Crisis. Besides ruptures in healthcare excellence and superiority, preparedness, and resilience, ephemeral dislocations also regard aspects of economic strength and superiority, prosperity, as well as economic and political independence. These terms stand in an equivalential relation to each other, such that they have undergone processes of metaphoric substitution in which each of the terms ceases their particular meaning and comes to represent the United States as a whole. The construction of the United States can thus be depicted along the following expanded equivalential chain: United States ≈ Healthcare Excellence / Superiority ≈ Preparedness ≈ Resilience ≈ Economic Strength / Superiority ≈ Prosperity ≈ Economic / Political Independence

During the Coronavirus Crisis, the metaphoric bond between these equivalential terms is exposed as precarious. Despite efforts to preserve the hegemonic articulation of the United States through assurances of continuing healthcare preparedness, excellence, and resilience, as well as promises to regain economic strength, prosperity, and economic independence, including countervailing measures that are implemented to absorb economic hardship, these endeavors cannot hide that sedimented discursive structures have been disrupted. Metaphoric substitution remains an incomplete process which will never constitute complete and stable identities, but the Coronavirus Crisis underlines the contingent ground on which the governmental construction of the United States relies. It hence discloses processes of metaphoric totalization in the construction of the United States and reveals the metonymic character of those equivalential terms through which one particular version of the United States is constructed. As this disclosure does not necessitate change, it becomes necessary to analyze how the hegemonic project has persisted in the course of the Coronavirus Crisis by externalizing its internal deficiencies and emerging disruptions to an external, antagonistic other who is presented as the origin of continuing disruptions. Having scrutinized the Coronavirus Crisis in terms of ephemeral dislocation in the areas of healthcare, economy, and defense, in the next step, we have to pay attention to how ephemeral dislocations are constructed in processes of translocation.

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The Antagonistic Construction of the Coronavirus Crisis

During the Coronavirus Crisis, continuing disruptions have been externalized to China, which not only serves as an antagonistic other that prevents the United States from complete recovery, but additional economic deficiencies are also ascribed to China in this process, rendering China an antagonist that exceeds the mere Coronavirus Crisis. The externalization of the emerging Coronavirus Crisis to an antagonistic China can be observed when analyzing the transforming articulation of China during Trump’s presidency. In the early months of January and February 2020, the construction of China is dominated by the conclusion of the U.S.–China Phase One Trade Agreement in which China commits to purchase additional American products and services, to protect American intellectual property rights, and to refrain from competitive currency devaluations. During this time, Trump reiterates that he has “a great relationship with China”74 which “has never been better”.75 In fact, he looks forward to “a future of greater harmony, prosperity, and […] commerce”76 between the United States and China since a harmonious relation between these countries, Trump argues, is important for the whole world. Despite assessing that the United States has suffered from previous trade deficits, he does not put the blame on China, but denounces previous U.S. administrations which tolerated how China took advantage of the United States through trade relations.77 In February 2020, Trump remains positive towards China despite the emerging Covid-19 pandemic and appreciates China’s Coronavirus response. In spite of concerning voices regarding potential transparency issues, Trump stresses that the Chinese government handles the Coronavirus professionally.78 During March 2020, however, Trump’s defense of China’s Coronavirus response begins to crumble, while he nevertheless continues to portray China positively, not yet establishing an antagonistic relationship. Recognizing that the Covid-19 pandemic originated in China, he does not denounce the latter but puts forward that no actor can be blamed since the Coronavirus is simply “one of those things that happened”.79 Moreover, although Trump admits that the Chinese government should have informed the United States earlier about the Coronavirus, since this “would have been helpful”80 for responding to the Coronavirus, he maintains that China does not deliberately inflict the disease upon the United States. Trump hence withdraws responsibility

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from the Chinese Coronavirus response which, however, would drastically change in the course of the Coronavirus Crisis since it is Chinese responsibility which would build the basis for externalizing socio-economic disruptions in the United States to an antagonized China. Trump’s denomination of the Coronavirus, which he repeatedly refers to as “Chinese virus”,81 functions as a first indication of the emerging antagonistic relation that Trump re-establishes towards China. By naming the Coronavirus by its country of origin, he articulates the Coronavirus as an external disease, continuously reminding of its external origin. This conceals how the Coronavirus has already spread within the United States and presents a domestic threat. It further distracts from potential political mismanagement within the United States and ascribes the origin of socioeconomic disruptions to external circumstances rather than to insufficient domestic responses and preexisting deficiencies within the United States. This fits into Trump’s early containment efforts until March 2020, which aim at protecting the United States from the external threat of the Coronavirus, while the risk that the Coronavirus poses within the United States is marginalized. Towards the end of March 2020, Trump repeatedly regrets that the Chinese government has not released earlier information about the Coronavirus, maintaining that “I wish China would have told us more about what was going on in China, long prior to us reading about it”.82 He further insists that the Covid-19 pandemic “could have been stopped pretty easily if we had known—if everybody had known about it a number of months before people started reading about it”.83 This critique, however, remains formulated carefully as Trump reiterates that his relationship towards China remains very good,84 although he remarks critically that he is “a little upset with China”85 due to them withholding information on the Coronavirus. The U.S.–Chinese relationship is further strained when Trump denounces the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Coronavirus response, accusing them of being biased towards China.86 Trump criticizes that the WHO failed to investigate the emergence of the Coronavirus within China, not deploying medical professionals who can assess the situation on the ground, and hence to obtain adequate and timely information on the Coronavirus, including aspects such as transmissibility and mortality. Moreover, Trump accuses the WHO of deliberately withholding information on the Coronavirus and refraining from investigating reports on the Coronavirus that contradict Chinese official statements.

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He further remarks critically that the WHO remained silent on transparency issues, including “the disappearance of scientific researchers and doctors and on new restrictions on the sharing of research into the origins of COVID-19 in the country of origin”.87 Trump concludes that the WHO’s Coronavirus response caused “tremendous death and economic devastation”88 which could have been prevented through adequate and timely measures through which “the outbreak could have been contained at its source, with very little death”.89 Trump’s critique of the World Health Organization finally manifests in his decision to halt the United States’ WHO funding while its “role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus”90 is assessed. At this point, it becomes clear that the public health consequences and economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic are directly attributed to the WHO’s Coronavirus response, which is articulated as substantially deficient, belated, and non-transparent. Instead of acknowledging any mismanagement on the side of the United States or structural deficiencies that exacerbate these impacts, socio-economic disruptions are externalized to the World Health Organization, which is portrayed as supporting the Chinese government. Through this intermediary, the Coronavirus Crisis begins to be constructed as originating from China, and it is the re-emerging antagonism between the United States and China that makes this construction possible. This antagonistic relation is articulated more directly in Trump’s repeated statements that he is “not happy with China”91 because of the Covid-19 pandemic which he holds China responsible for. He denounces China’s Coronavirus response, insisting that the Covid-19 pandemic “could have been solved probably very easily […] if a certain country did what they should have done”.92 He is adamant that the Coronavirus outbreak “could have been stopped at the source, it could have been stopped quickly, and it wouldn’t have spread all over the world”.93 Trump therefore accuses the Chinese government of prohibiting timely and adequate responses by withholding information, preventing foreign investigation, and continuing to deliver unreliable infection and mortality numbers which, according to Trump, is the reason that the Coronavirus has been transmitted to the United States and has spread globally.94 Trump thereby presupposes that highly transmissible diseases can be contained completely, and insists that what happened to the United States was “totally preventable”.95 This includes the underlying argument that adequate politics is capable of bringing the forces of nature, such as

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diseases, under human control. It disregards, however, that in a highly interconnected world, we are unable to identify, track, and control every transmission. Adequate political decisions can therefore alleviate diseases, but they remain incapable of mastering them, such that putting the blame on Chinese mismanagement alone presents an externalization of the United States’ own deficiencies, the permanently destabilized nature of social structures, and the limits of human control. In this vein, Stavrakakis aptly mentions that “the unpredictability and severity of natural forces have forced people from time immemorial to attempt to understand and master them through processes of imaginary representation” (Stavrakakis 2000, 108), even though we remain unable to master the unpredictable effects of natural forces. Trump further presumes that the Chinese government tolerated, and deliberately exacerbated the global spread of the Coronavirus, including its severe public health and economic consequences. He argues that the Coronavirus outbreak “could have been stopped short, but somebody a long time ago, it seems, decided not to do it that way” such that “the whole world is suffering because of it”.96 Moreover, the Chinese government is accused of exacerbating the spread of the Coronavirus by permitting travelers to leave China while prohibiting foreign investigations of the Coronavirus outbreak inside China. Trump is therefore concerned that “they stopped all the planes and all of the traffic from going into China, but they didn’t stop the planes and the traffic from coming into the United States and from coming into all over Europe”.97 Trump hence identifies two major factors in China’s mismanagement of the Coronavirus outbreak: insufficient transparency and the permission of foreign travel. Because of these reasons, he claims that nobody, “except one country, can be held accountable for what happened”.98 Trump thus shifts the responsibility for the Covid-19 pandemic, including its outbreak in China, its worldwide spread, and its public health and economic consequences, to China’s initial Coronavirus response. He thereby repudiates that socio-economic disruption in the United States has been engendered by his own response, including tentative and belated mitigation measures, as well as by preexisting instabilities within the United States, regarding, for instance, healthcare preparedness and capacity, illusions of perfect health and resilience, as well as constructions of unchallenged economic strength.

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Translocation

It is this development that accentuates the antagonistic relation that Trump re-establishes towards China, and which makes it possible to analyze how the Coronavirus Crisis has been constructed through processes of translocation. The construction of ephemeral dislocations presupposes a particular articulation of the United States that becomes the object of ephemeral disruptions, processes of translocation in which the Coronavirus, constructed as an initially alien signifier, enters and destabilizes the United States, as well as the establishment of antagonistic relations from which the Coronavirus originates. The construction of the Coronavirus Crisis in the governmental discourse in the United States can hence be depicted as follows: (1) Articulation of the United States. The United States has been constructed along the lines of healthcare excellence and superiority, preparedness, resilience, economic strength and superiority, prosperity, as well as economic and political independence. This articulation, however, merely presents one particular version of the United States which remains permeable, open to contestation and rearticulation, and hence susceptible to disruptions, although it is presented as unchallenged. (2) Ephemeral dislocation. This sedimented articulation of the United States has become disrupted during the Coronavirus Crisis. As sedimented social structures began to crumble, the contingent foundation on which the construction of the United States relies has been disclosed, promises of healthcare preparedness and sufficient capacity have been revealed as illusionary, and promises of economic strength and prosperity suffered from the implementation of mitigation measures. (3) Establishment of antagonistic relations. Instead of locating the origin of these ephemeral dislocations in insufficient Coronavirus responses in the United States, to preexisting healthcare deficiencies and structural inequalities, or to the permanently destabilized character of discursive structures, the emergence of ephemeral dislocations has been externalized to China. That is, antagonistic relations are established towards China, and the latter is presented as the origin of the outbreak and global spread of the Coronavirus,

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as well as of the continuation of socio-economic disruptions in the United States. (4) Translocation. The emergence of the Coronavirus Crisis is ascribed to the spread of the Coronavirus into the United States. The Coronavirus is hence treated as an antagonistic element which is principally foreign to the United States, originating in Wuhan in particular, and in China in general. It hence infiltrates the allegedly stable discourse of the United States, engendering ephemeral dislocations in the form of healthcare challenges and economic hardship. It is in this sense that the Coronavirus has become spatially uprooted, leaving its country of origin and destabilizing sedimented discursive structures in the United States. During the Coronavirus Crisis, Trump articulates these translocatory processes quite openly, speaking of “the virus from the distant land that spread across the globe and invaded our shores”.99 It is described vividly how the Coronavirus presents an external element that has originated in China and remains antagonistic towards the United States where it represents an alien element that must be expelled. Disruptions in the United States are attributed to this antagonistic Coronavirus, as Trump maintains that “a cruel virus from a distant land has unfairly claimed thousands of precious American lives”.100 The Coronavirus has further induced severe economic disruption as “[p]rior to the China plague coming in, floating in, coming into our country, and really doing terrible things all over the world […] almost every group was the best for unemployment”.101 It therefore has become necessary to “rescue the U.S. economy from a horrible event that was formed, took place in China, and came here”.102 Being continuously articulated as an antagonistic element, the Coronavirus has inflicted substantial socio-economic disruptions on the United States which can be traced back to its antagonistic origin, that is, China. Translocation hence presents an articulatory process through which the emergence of ephemeral dislocations is externalized to an antagonistic other. Although translocation may revolve around material processes, such as transmissions of the Coronavirus, how transition processes are constructed transcends immediate material conditions.

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7.3 Permanent and Recurring Dislocation in the Coronavirus Crisis Trump does not merely portray China as an ongoing source of instability that threatens the United States’ healthcare and economy due to aspects linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, but he re-establishes an antagonistic relation towards China that exceeds issues immediately related to the pandemic. Since May 2020, China has been transformed into an antagonist that poses a threat to the American economy and independence in general, building on previous tensions between the United States and China.103 Trump proclaims that China, for decades, has “ripped off the United States like no one has ever done before” while the Chinese government has “raided our factories, offshored our jobs, gutted our industries, stole our intellectual property, and violated their commitments under the World Trade Organization”.104 Through these charges, China is constructed in an antagonistic relation that exceeds the Coronavirus Crisis, for Trump stresses previous economic tensions which, in his argumentation, were only temporarily alleviated through the conclusion of the Phase One Trade Agreement. In the continuing construction of China, the trade agreement is dismissed as irrelevant, and China appears in an overt antagonistic relation towards the United States, once again threatening the American economy through its economic practices. Accordingly, Trump claims that “there is nobody ever that ripped off the United States like China”,105 and it is the influence of the Chinese government in the United States as well as the latter’s dependence on Chinese manufacturing that must be terminated, so the argument goes, to ensure American economic strength and independence. In his Executive Order on preventing online censorship, Trump is concerned that online platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube promote disinformation spread by the Chinese government on the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and amplify Chinese propaganda.106 Trump has further issued several Executive Orders against Chinese software companies, claiming that “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China […] continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States”.107 He remarks critically that these companies collect large amounts of data, including personal and proprietary information which can be used for blackmail and

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corporate espionage. This can be harnessed to exploit American companies, gaining access to technological insights and competitive advantages. Trump concludes that, by spreading Chinese mobile applications in the United States, the Chinese government intends to advance its “economic and national security agenda”.108 He further denounces that on these mobile applications, content is censored, and disinformation is spread according to standards imposed by the Chinese government. Thereby, Americans are restricted in the information they can access and convey, which limits their freedom of speech and potentially aligns them with statements prescribed by the Chinese government. In prohibiting Chinese software applications, Trump hence seeks to minimize the influence that the Chinese government can exercise over the American economy and the American public. Trump has further suspended the entry of Chinese post-graduate students and researchers, claiming that China attempts to “acquire sensitive United States technologies and intellectual property, in part to bolster the modernization and capability of its military”109 which threatens the United States’ “long-term economic vitality and the safety and security of the American people”.110 Trump presumes that it is mostly postgraduate students and post-doctorate researchers who are employed to collect American technologies and intellectual property, and who should accordingly be prevented from entering the United States in order to secure its economic position. Moreover, Trump condemns that Chinese companies have benefited from the U.S. financial market and raised capital in the United States, thereby fueling Chinese economic growth, without, however, abiding by U.S. transparency laws, which poses a risk to American investors.111 Trump further assumes that China exploits U.S. capital to resource and advance its military, intelligence, and other security apparatuses by compelling the support of Chinese civilian companies that raise capital by selling securities to U.S. investors. Through this financial exploitation, China is said to be capable of developing and modernizing its military and intelligence, including its weapons of mass destructions, conventional weapons, and cyber technologies, which threatens the United States’ military, national security, and economy.112 The antagonistic relation towards China has hence been expanded. Instead of merely regarding healthcare and economic aspects related to the Coronavirus Crisis, China reappears as extensively threatening the United States’ economy and national security, which is, in the traditional

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sense of the term, linked to matters of national survival and military capabilities. These threats are further ascribed to the financial influence and exploitation that the Chinese government and its intermediaries, such as software companies, civilian financial companies as well as post-graduate students and researchers, exercise in the United States. Trump therefore aims at preventing this financial influence and exploitation. He seeks to impair the Chinese economic and military development and maintain the United States’ economic and military superiority that the United States is identified with. Moreover, Trump reckons that the United States would have been incapable of responding to the Covid-19 pandemic in a sufficient manner with its previous stockpile in healthcare supplies and equipment, which potentially compromises the United States’ public health and economic strength. However, instead of acknowledging the insufficient preparedness of its own administration, Trump ascribes shortages in personal protective equipment and ventilators to previous governments and to the United States’ dependence on foreign manufacturing. In response to this anticipated lack, Trump aims at enhancing U.S. economic independence, seeking to suture the ontic lack of economic destabilization induced by the dependence on foreign manufacturing, allegedly leading to renewed economic strength if manufacturing independence is achieved. Economic disruptions resulting from economic dependence further concur with the establishment of antagonistic relations towards China since it is the latter that is particularly targeted when it comes to the United States’ dependence on foreign manufacturing.113 Trump argues that the “pandemic has shown once again the vital importance of economic independence and bringing supply chains back from China and other countries”,114 and when addressing actions against China, he remarks that the Covid19 pandemic has “underscored the crucial importance of building up America’s economic independence, reshoring our critical supply chains and protecting America’s scientific and technological advances”.115 Economic independence, in a first sense, concerns medical aspects. Trump proclaims that protecting the United States’ citizens as well as its critical infrastructure, military, and economy from infectious diseases requires “resilient domestic supply chains”116 for essential medicines, supplies, and equipment. He therefore deems it necessary to “reduce our dependence on foreign manufacturers […] to ensure sufficient and reliable long-term domestic production of these products, to minimize potential shortages, and to mobilize our Public Health Industrial Base

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to respond to these threats”.117 Ensuring a sufficient supply of medical products, however, does not merely relate to healthcare aspects, but Pence makes clear that the domestic production of personal productive equipment, for instance, is vital for both maintaining public health and economic growth.118 Economic independence exceeds concerns that are immediately related to healthcare issues as Trump insists that “to be a strong nation, America must be a manufacturing nation”.119 The United States’ economic growth and strength is hence related to its economic independence. This equivalential relation is further expanded when Trump argues that “national independence requires economic independence”120 and “restoring American manufacturing is a core matter of national security”.121 In this sense, Trump puts forward that “foreign dependence is not only the antithesis of the American spirit, but it also endangers our national security in times of crisis”.122 In his Executive Order on critical minerals, Trump also proclaims that “a strong America cannot be dependent on imports from foreign adversaries for the critical minerals that are increasingly necessary to maintain our economic and military strength”.123 He in particular accuses China of using aggressive economic practices to oversupply the global market with critical minerals and exploiting its positions by compelling industries to relocate their manufacturing plants to China and giving the latter access to their intellectual property and technology. Trump hence seeks to reduce the United States’ “vulnerability to adverse foreign government action, natural disaster, or other supply disruptions”124 by expanding and strengthening the mining and processing of critical minerals in the United States. This shields the United States from “the possibility of supply chain disruptions and future attempts by our adversaries or strategic competitors to harm our economy and military readiness”.125 Economic independence is therefore embedded in a broader equivalential chain, encompassing matters of economic strength and growth, national security and independence, as well as military strength and readiness. The construction of the United States can hence be depicted along the following expanded chain of equivalence: United States ≈ Healthcare Excellence / Superiority ≈ Preparedness ≈ Resilience ≈ Economic Strength / Superiority ≈ Economic Growth ≈ Prosperity ≈ Economic / Political Independence ≈ Military Strength ≈ National Security

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While the antagonistic relation that has been established towards China previously targeted aspects immediately related to the Coronavirus Crisis and its socio-economic disruptions in the United States, in the course of the Coronavirus Crisis, China has been retransformed into an antagonist that generally threatens major aspects of the United States’ self-portrayal: economic strength and independence, political independence, as well as military strength. This expanded antagonistic construction, however, is hardly surprising. Even if ephemeral dislocations of the Covid-19 pandemic could be alleviated, the identification of the United States would be fundamentally destabilized, open to contestation, and vulnerable to future disruptions. It is this permanent destabilization, reflected in persisting healthcare shortages, economic deficiencies, as well as structural medical and economic inequalities, that is externalized to China. Accordingly, in order to regain stability, these ontic lacks are sought to be resolved by restricting Chinese influence in the United States and the latter’s dependence on China. This, however, presents an attempt at stabilization which will remain ultimately futile due to the constitutive character of permanent dislocation, that is, due to the impossibility to constitute any meaning, and hence any society, completely. Endeavors to construct a particular version of the United States can only acquire an illusionary stability which will again be shattered by renewed ephemeral dislocations. It is hence the object of every hegemonic project to alleviate ephemeral disruptions to regain stability, either by integrating them as differential elements in the hegemonic discourse or by attributing them to the presence of antagonistic elements that must be excluded. When analyzing ephemeral constructions of crises, it finally remains the overarching aim to identify these processes of disruption, integration, and exclusion, as well as processes of institutionalization that aim at sustaining the hegemonic project. 7.3.1

Institutionalization

During the Covid-19 pandemic, continuous attempts have been made to maintain the hegemonic construction of the United States. Even at the time when healthcare and economic impacts have been acknowledged, they have been constructed as temporary impairments that would soon have passed. Already in March 2020, Trump anticipates that the pandemic will pass soon, the hardship will end, normal life will return,

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and the economy will rebound.126 He reminds us that extended mitigation measures, which were in place from March until April, only temporarily interrupt socio-economic practices. During this mitigation period, he already claims that “you’re going to start seeing some real light at the end of the tunnel”,127 expecting that the Covid-19 pandemic will be under control in the next couple of weeks.128 Longing for the continuation of previously sedimented practices as well as the recovery of those socio-economic structures that have been shaken by the Covid19 pandemic, he insists that the Coronavirus will have been left behind “at a certain point in the not-too-distant future”.129 Restrictions in social life and economic practices, while protecting public health by preventing increased transmission, are only accepted for a restricted period of time. Moreover, healthcare and economic aspects are repeatedly linked when articulating the United States’ recovery from the Coronavirus Crisis. In the beginning of the mitigation period, Trump already promises that “[b]y making shared sacrifices and temporary changes, we can protect the health of our people and we can protect our economy”.130 It is both the health of the American people and the United States’ economic strength which should be protected from impacts imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. This also becomes clear in Pence’s assurance that “[w]e will get through the coronavirus to that day of renewed health and renewed prosperity”.131 Trump, in a similar way, ensures that “we’ll restore America’s health and economic might, but also dimensions of our national strength will be brought together”.132 Public health, however, is not only juxtaposed to economic strength but Trump maintains that “[e]nsuring the health of our economy is vital to ensuring the health of our nation”.133 Economic strength appears as the precondition for preserving public health, alleviating issues such as substance abuse, suicide, and mental illness,134 since a “never-ending lockdown would inflict colossal damage on the health and lifespans of our people”.135 Instead of continuing with economic restrictions that affect the whole population, Trump insists that “[t]he best strategy for public health is to aggressively protect the most vulnerable while allowing younger and healthier Americans to work safely”.136 This strategy is implemented with the guidelines for “Opening Up America Again”, published in April 2020, where healthcare aspects are adduced to justify the abandonment of economic restrictions, arguing that in order to “preserve the health of our citizens, we must also preserve the health and functioning of our economy”.137 While sheltering elderly

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individuals and those with underlying health conditions from contracting the Coronavirus, the majority of the American population is asked to resume work. This is supposed to prevent public health issues that are exacerbated by extended mitigation measures, such as drug and alcohol abuse, suicide, as well as mental and physical wellbeing. Mitigation, to a large extent, makes room for renewed containment, including travel restrictions, border control, early case recognition, isolation, and contract tracing, because “we must be extra vigilant in blocking the foreign entry of the virus from abroad”.138 Even though extended health consequences are serious, reducing mitigation at this point is predominantly a testament to the continuation and recovery of sedimented structures, since economic reopening is not the only way to confront substance abuse, mental health, and physical wellbeing, and it is further not a response to issues that have preceded the Covid-19 pandemic. When expounding that extended economic restrictions not only inflict “long-lasting damage on society and public health as a whole” but also “massive economic pain”,139 it becomes clear that public health issues are not the only reason for economic recovery. Already in March 2020, Trump maintains that extended mitigation, including economic restrictions, are “very painful for our country and very destabilizing for our country, and we have to go back to work, much sooner than people thought”.140 Economic considerations, from the beginning, drive the discontinuation of most mitigation measures and hence the reopening of the American economy. This is also reflected in the changed objective of Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force which has been transformed from saving lives and protecting the American people from the Coronavirus to reopening the American economy while continuing to save lives.141 Economic recovery as such, independent of its promised impacts on public health, becomes the central aspect in the United States’ recovery from the Coronavirus Crisis. It is the hegemonic construction of the United States, linked to economic strength, superiority, and growth, which is to be regained. Trump therefore reiterates that he “was presiding over the most successful economy in the history of the world. And now we’re going to have to rebuild it”.142 In a similar way, he claims that “[w]e built the strongest and most prosperous economy in the history of the world. And we will do it again very, very quickly”.143 These remarks pervade the recovering processes from the Coronavirus Crisis, which has already begun with the recognition of initial disruptions to sedimented discursive structures in

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the United States.144 From the beginning, processes of institutionalization have taken place through assurances of resilience and recovery as well as countervailing measures that were implemented to alleviate the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, once potentially destabilizing developments were identified. Ephemeral dislocation and institutionalization are hence not successive processes, but they interpenetrate each other, and might well take place at the same time. During the Covid-19 pandemic, several economic countermeasures have been implemented to alleviate the economic impacts of the pandemic, such as paid sick as well as expanded family and medical leave, including the option of federally paid sick leave, direct cash payments and expanded unemployment benefits for employees, as well as tax credits and job retention loans for businesses. Moreover, Trump has issued Executive Orders, suspending the entry of immigrants and temporary workers in order to “protect the solvency of our healthcare system and provide relief to jobless Americans”,145 suggesting that additional permanent residents as well as temporary workers, potentially being accompanied by their spouses and children, further strain the American healthcare system, and withdraw jobs from unemployed Americans.146 Without this intervention, Trump argues, “the United States faces a potentially protracted economic recovery with persistently high unemployment numbers”.147 Trump’s endeavors in recovering previously sedimented economic practices and regaining economic strength, however, are directed not only at retaining the United States’ economic position before the Covid-19 outbreak, but he seeks to surpass its previous position. He therefore repeatedly assures that “we’re going to build this economy back bigger, better, stronger than ever before”148 such that the United States can “emerge from this challenge with a prosperous and growing economy”.149 This is also reflected in Trump’s promises that already in the third quarter of 2020, the United States’ economy will begin to recover, leading to a successful fourth quarter, and potentially to the economically strongest year in the United States’ history. Trump repeats this so-called “transition into greatness”150 over and over again, aspiring to emerge from the Coronavirus Crisis not only with retained economic strength but with economic growth. Economic strength and economic growth are further not the only aspects that shape the United States’ recovery from the Coronavirus Crisis, but even in the midst of economic disruptions, Trump underlines the economically superior position of the United States. He puts forward

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that “the virus-induced economic contraction in the United States has been far less severe than it was with our peers and peer nations”,151 extenuating the economic disruptions that the Covid-19 pandemic has inflicted on the United States, while stressing its economic strength that sheltered the United States from more severe consequences. In a similar way, Trump states that “the United States has seen the smallest economic contraction of any major Western nation, and we are recovering at a much faster rate than any other nation”.152 The superiority of the American economy hence not only comes to the fore in extenuated economic contraction, but also in the United States’ recovery from the Coronavirus Crisis. In this sense, Trump remarks that “[t]he whole world suffered, but America outperformed other countries economically because of our incredible economy and the economy that we built”.153 Even when infection and hospitalization numbers increase towards the end of June 2020, mitigation measures are not renewed at national level, although extended mitigation measures are again implemented in particular states. Instead, recommendations on personal hygiene, social distancing, and face covering, as formulated in the guidelines in reopening the economy, are considered to be sufficiently mitigating the spread of the Coronavirus, which allows low-risk individuals to resume work and school.154 Moreover, Pence continuously ensures that the United States is prepared for responding to increasing cases and hospitalizations, promising states support with testing, medical professionals, personal protective equipment, ventilators, therapeutics, and other medical resources.155 Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, the United States is articulated in line with preparedness. Rising infection and hospitalization numbers are thereby integrated in the hegemonic discourse of American preparedness, because sufficient supplies of medical resources as well as advances in testing and treatment warrant increased transmission and healthcare consequences. It is this preparedness of response which also justifies the continued reopening of the American economy since it is argued that increased testing capacity and sentinel surveillance testing facilitate early case recognition, and advances in therapeutics and vaccine alleviate health consequences.156 As infection and hospitalization numbers again begin to rise significantly in November 2020, Pence repeatedly offers the assurance that “America has never been more prepared to combat this virus than we are today”.157 Moreover, as the authorization of vaccines has come

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within reach, vaccination is presented as the remedy for leaving the Covid19 pandemic behind in the near future. Trump claims, for instance, that “[b]y vaccinating the elderly and the high-risk, we will effectively end this phase of the pandemic”.158 In a similar way, Pence insists that through vaccines, “the day will come and come soon when we put this coronavirus in the past and return our nation to the freedom and the health and the lifestyle that we’ve all enjoyed across this country”.159 Throughout the Coronavirus Crisis, emerging socio-economic disruptions have attempted to be alleviated in order to retain sedimented discursive structures. At the same time, economic challenges have been articulated as temporary interruptions that would soon be left behind either through healthcare excellence, including the development of vaccines, through the resilience of the American people, or through the strength of the American economy. Thereby, economic stability is not only regained, but the United States is also supposed to emerge with renewed economic growth from the Coronavirus Crisis. The hegemonic construction of the United States, including aspects of healthcare excellence, preparedness, and resilience as well as economic strength, growth, and prosperity has constantly shaped the articulation of the Coronavirus Crisis from its emergence to its alleged recovery. This is hardly surprising since it is exactly this hegemonic construction of the United States that has been disrupted in the first place and which is again attempted to be retained in processes of institutionalization. At the same time, however, this shows that the hegemonic project, while being shaken during the Covid-19 pandemic, has neither been disrupted nor transformed in the long term. Instead, emerging disruptions have either been integrated in the hegemonic discourse as differential elements, externalized to an antagonistic China, or marginalized without any antagonistic group being able to overturn the hegemonic project, although a variety of critical voices has been raised against Trump’s Coronavirus response. The Coronavirus Crisis is finally articulated as a testament to the strength, resilience, and superiority of the United States, as Trump notes in his farewell address: “What has always allowed America to prevail and triumph over the great challenges of the past has been an unyielding and unashamed conviction in the nobility of our country and its unique purpose in history.”160

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Conclusion

Poststructuralist analysis sheds light on the ephemeral construction of the Coronavirus Crisis in the United States while, at the same time, enabling us to contextualize how it transcends an immediate ephemeral dimension. In order to understand how the Coronavirus Crisis has been constructed and how attempts have been made to overcome it, instabilities that precede the ephemeral construction of the Coronavirus Crisis must be analyzed. This leads us to consider the permanently destabilized nature of U.S. identity in light of recurring attempts to acquire completion through externalizing the United States’ deficiencies to antagonistic others. In order to understand the Coronavirus Crisis thoroughly, it hence becomes necessary to link its ephemeral construction to its recurring and permanent dimension. The Coronavirus Crisis presents a discursive construction, encompassing both linguistic and non-linguistic aspects. It hence acknowledges the material circumstances that the Covid-19 pandemic has imposed upon the United States, without reducing the Coronavirus Crisis to materiality. The Covid-19 pandemic, in fact, provides only a loose material foundation for what can be identified as the Coronavirus Crisis in the governmental discourse in the United States. In principle, there are multiple Coronavirus Crises, and when analyzing the Coronavirus Crisis in the United States, we always deal with one particular construction that has emerged from previous discursive structures. This particular construction of the Coronavirus Crisis can be scrutinized in terms of ephemeral dislocation, denoting disruptions in discursive structures that have characterized the United States principally unquestioned for a prolonged time, having become sedimented in the U.S. governmental discourse. Disruption, in this sense, acquires a revelatory function such that the Coronavirus Crisis discloses the contingent nature of the United States’ self-portrayal, accentuating structural deficiencies that have preceded the construction of the Coronavirus Crisis. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the United States has in particular been identified along the lines of healthcare excellence and superiority, preparedness, resilience, economic strength and superiority, prosperity, as well as economic and political independence. It is this construction of the United States that has been disrupted during the Coronavirus Crisis,

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having been exposed as contingent and contestable. Promises of healthcare capacity and preparedness have crumbled under increasing hospitalization and fatality numbers, and assurances of unwavering economic strength have been disclosed as being susceptible to the destructive force of diseases and the impairments of mitigation measures. The Coronavirus Crisis must hence be understood in terms of ephemeral dislocation and cannot be grasped without understanding those social structures that have long characterized the United States. The hegemonic discourse has, nevertheless, attempted be retained which can be observed in several countermeasures: (1) Marginalization. Emerging disruptions have been marginalized as not affecting the United States, which could particularly be observed in the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also when infection and hospitalization numbers began to rise, the protection from severe health consequences assumed a secondary role when prioritizing economic reopening, as promises of preparedness overshadowed potential benefits of extended mitigation. (2) Reproduction. Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, the sedimented identity of the United States has been rearticulated, which is reflected in promises of preparedness, resilience, healthcare excellence, and continued economic strength. Ephemeral disruptions hence not only disclose sedimented discursive structures but also provide opportunities to reproduce them, reasserting a particular version of the United States and strengthening the existing hegemonic discourse (see also Weldes 1999, 54). (3) Integration. At times, emergent disruptions have been integrated in the governmental discourse as differential positions that do not interfere with the hegemonic construction of the United States. The implementation of mitigation measures, for instance, has been constructed in line with promises of healthcare capacity and resilience, as elderly individuals and those with underlying health conditions should be protected, not the population at large. Moreover, extended mitigation measures have been articulated as deliberate and manageable detriments that do not stand in contrast to promises of economic strength and prosperity. (4) Externalization. Ephemeral dislocations have finally been externalized to an antagonistic China which is presented as the origin

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of ongoing disruptions to the United States’ healthcare capacity, its economic and military strength, as well as its economic and political independence. Thereby, it has been ruled out that disruptions emerge from insufficient Coronavirus responses in the United States, preexisting healthcare deficiencies and structural inequalities, or the permanently dislocated character of U.S. identity. It is at this point that processes of translocation have taken place, as the Coronavirus has been articulated as an antagonistic element that has originated in China and is principally foreign to the United States. The emergence of ephemeral dislocations is hence attributed to the infiltration of this antagonistic element into the allegedly stable discourse of the United States, which has engendered policies to impair China’s influence on the American economy and minimize the United States’ dependence on Chinese manufacturing in order to regain stability. The Coronavirus Crisis further exposes the contingent foundations of the United States’ proclaimed identity. Ephemeral dislocation is thus interlinked with the recurring dimension of dislocation, as it discloses how the idealized identity of the United States along the lines of healthcare and economic superiority is in fact an incomplete construct that is only sought to be stabilized through repeated acts of identification, which remain incapable of securing an American identity. The sedimented identification of the United States has been disrupted, rendering visible that a particular vision of the United States is produced through governmental constructions that do not represent the United States’ inherent and uncontestable identity. The Coronavirus Crisis hence destabilizes illusions of healthcare excellence and superiority, preparedness, as well as economic strength and independence. It thereby introduces particular ontic lacks into the hegemonic construction of the United States. These lacks refer to the absence, or insufficient fulfillment, of particular characteristics that are central to the self-identification of the United States, such as economic strength, prosperity, and independence. However, they are not derived from the United States’ own deficiencies but ascribed to the presence of an antagonized China that prevents the United States from regaining an illusionary completion. The permanent dislocation of the United States is not addressed directly, but it is externalized to an antagonistic other that is to be blamed for continuing instabilities.

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If the hegemonic project is to be maintained, the United States cannot persist in a state of incompletion, but ephemeral dislocations must be terminated, and the United States’ ontic lacks must be re-sutured. This can be achieved either through integration or exclusion: Impacts and responses to the Covid-19 pandemic can be integrated as differential positions that do not stand in contrast to the hegemonic discourse. Alternatively, they remain antagonistic elements that must be excluded from the United States, which has become visible in travel restrictions and policies that aim at reducing Chinese influence while fostering American independence. That is, demands have emerged to fill the ontic lacks torn open by the Coronavirus Crisis. However, as complete stability remains an illusion, these demands can never be completely fulfilled. Therefore, identificatory processes will always recur in futile endeavors to acquire stability by assuring healthcare excellence and superiority, preparedness, economic strength, and growth, as well as economic and political independence. Even if particular ontic lacks could be sutured by expelling every shred of Chinese antagonism from the United States, identification would not result in an uncontestable and stable U.S. identity, but the United States remains constitutively incomplete and destabilized independently from the Coronavirus Crisis. Internal deficiencies and structural inequalities that have preceded the construction of the Coronavirus Crisis demonstrate the United States’ incapability of living up to its proclaimed identity in line with healthcare excellence and economic strength. This can be observed perhaps most strikingly in the disproportionate impacts that the Coronavirus has on African Americans. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, for instance, acknowledges that “people of color experience both more likely exposure to Covid-19 and increased complications from it” because they “have a higher incidence of the very diseases that puts you at risk for severe complications”.161 Fauci hence recognizes, in line with the revelatory function of ephemeral dislocation, that the Coronavirus Crisis shines “a very bright light on some of the real weaknesses and foibles in our society” since “health disparities have always existed for the African American community”.162 In a similar way, Deputy Assistant to the President Ja’Ron Smith reckons that “the COVID pandemic has shined a bright light on some of those historic disparities, whether it’s access to capital or if it’s access to healthcare or […] the environments that people grow up in”.163 The Coronavirus Crisis hence exposes structural inequalities that have long affected African Americans, including both healthcare and

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economic issues. These disparities have preceded the Coronavirus Crisis, and they will persist even when the United States has recovered from the socio-economic disruptions induced by the Covid-19 pandemic. In order to alleviate healthcare impacts on African Americans, preventative measures have been implemented to reduce transmission and support treatment in affected communities. This includes, for instance, increased access to testing in “under-tested, underserved, and minority communities”.164 Moreover, community health centers and mobile medical stations have been funded in “medically underserved urban and rural regions, including African American and Hispanic communities”165 to support testing and treatment. Trump further expresses his commitment to support underserved communities, restoring not only their physical but also their “economic health”.166 He praises, for instance, the development of unemployment among African Americans and Hispanic Americans prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, remarking that “our African American and Hispanic American citizens were prospering like never before”.167 Trump thus ascribes economic disruptions to the emergence of the Coronavirus Crisis, insisting on the economically strong position that African Americans previously had. When addressing prolonged economic inequalities, he furthermore does not locate their origin within the United States but argues that “so much of that wealth and that money and those jobs went to China and other countries”,168 thereby externalizing economic deficiencies. Impairments to the United States’ economic strength are thus expelled, distracting from the former’s internal deficiency and incompletion. Externalization hence presents a strategy that is not only pertinent during ephemeral dislocations, but for decades the permanently dislocated character of the United States has continuously been externalized to malevolent others. Even though healthcare disparities are acknowledged, healthcare issues are in particular supposed to be resolved through economic responses. Pence, for instance, expresses the commitment to support African Americans by increasing their access to capital, for example by reserving funds in the Paycheck Protection Program for financial institutions that serve minority communities. Economic inequality is further supposed to be minimized through increased access to education for African Americans to advance their employment prospects, making it possible for them “to be part of a growing economy”.169 Finally, healthcare disparities are supposed to be improved by implementing “free market solutions to

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give minority communities more choices in healthcare to improve their lives”.170 Thereby, however, economic and healthcare inequality is ascribed to individual responsibility, being affected by choices of education and healthcare. Structural inequalities are thus integrated into the hegemonic discourse, driven by the neoliberal belief in individual responsibility and free choice. This diverts deficiencies in economy and healthcare from the permanently dislocated character of the United States and ascribes them to African Americans themselves, who should be able to enhance their economic and healthcare situation once governmental incentives have been implemented. Even though structural inequalities are acknowledged, this neoliberal response neglects aspects of structural racism that produces healthcare and economic disparities in the first place. Individual choice therefore becomes a chimera, since as long as structural racism remains unapproached, African Americans are structurally and systematically disadvantaged, which engenders the reproduction of healthcare and economic disparities. Hence, even though the Coronavirus Crisis has underlined structural inequalities, this has not destabilized the United States’ self-identification because economic and healthcare disparities have been integrated into the hegemonic discourse and underlying questions of structural racism remained unaddressed. Although structural inequalities persist, these strategies of integration and marginalization further stabilize the hegemonic discourse and conceal the constitutively incomplete character of the United States’ self-identification. Recurring dislocation thus vanishes behind an idealized American identity, although the latter remains constitutively disjointed from aspects of healthcare excellence and economic strength which it is identified with. It is at this point that the permanent dimension of dislocation sets in, designating the fundamental impossibility of the United States to be completely constituted. As an ontological characteristic, permanent dislocation cannot be encountered directly. Nonetheless, it is central to understanding matters of recurring and ephemeral dislocation, since it is only on the grounds of permanent dislocation that hegemony is possible. Identification cannot succeed in achieving completely stable and uncontested identities because there remains an infinity of possibilities how the United States can be articulated. It is only because of the latter’s permanently dislocated character that the governmental construction put forward by Donald Trump and members of his administration remains subject to contestation. However, permanent dislocation also leads to the

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establishment of antagonistic relationships that supposedly prevent the complete constitution of one particular version of the United States. We must keep in mind that although the existence of others is inevitable, they do not have to be articulated as threatening. By regarding our society as constitutively incomplete and destabilized, the identification of antagonism with practices of threat construction can be exposed as an externalization of our own incompletion. Finally, the construction of ephemeral dislocations necessitates permanent dislocation since sedimented structures can only be disrupted if they were only relatively stabilized to begin with. If we were surrounded by stable, uncontestable social structures, we might well observe material impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, but discursive disruptions would not arise, as the United States would no longer be a precarious discursive construct but an uncontestable entity. The Coronavirus Crisis hence transcends an immediate ephemeral dimension, and it is indispensable to acknowledge how its construction rests on the recurringly insufficient construction of the United States and the latter’s permanent impossibility to acquire complete constitution.

Notes 1. For an overview of publications that analyze the Covid-19 pandemic from different perspectives, see for instance the special issue in International Organization (Finnemore et al. 2020). 2. Trump, Donald J. May 3, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump in a Fox News Virtual Town Hall”. 3. Trump, Donald J. January 22, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump and President Barzani of the Kurdistan Regional Government Before Bilateral Meeting | Davos, Switzerland”. 4. Trump, Donald J. January 30, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump at a USMCA Celebration with American Workers | Warren, MI”; also, Trump, Donald J. February 23, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump Before Marine One Departure”; Trump, Donald J. February 25, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump in Press Conference”; Trump, Donald J. February 26, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Conference”; Trump, Donald J. February 29, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump at the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference | National Harbor, MD”. 5. Azar, Alex, Anthony Fauci, and Robert Redfield. January 31, 2020. “Press Briefing by Members of the President’s Coronavirus Task Force”;

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9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

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Trump, Donald J., Michael Pence, and Anthony Azar. February 26, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Conference”. Trump, Donald J., Michael Pence, Alex Azar, and Robert Redfield. February 29, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Conference”. Azar, Alex. January 31, 2020. “Press Briefing by Members of the President’s Coronavirus Task Force”; Grisham, Stephanie. January 29, 2020. “Statement from the Press Secretary Regarding the President’s Coronavirus Task Force”. Trump, Donald J. January 31, 2020. “Proclamation on Suspension of Entry as Immigrants and Nonimmigrants of Persons who Pose a Risk of Transmitting 2019 Novel Coronavirus”. Pence, Michael. January 27, 2020. “Remarks by Vice President Pence at the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Lunar New Year Celebration”; Azar, Alex, Robert Redfield, and Ken Cuccinelli. January 31, 2020. “Press Briefing by Members of the President’s Coronavirus Task Force”; Pence, Michael. February 29, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Conference”; Pence, Michael. March 4, 2020. “Press Briefing by Vice President Pence and Members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force”. Azar, Alex. January 31, 2020. “Press Briefing by Members of the President’s Coronavirus Task Force”. Ibid. Redfield, Robert. February 29, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Conference”. Redfield, Robert. March 3, 2020. “Press Briefing by Vice President Pence and Members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force”. Trump, Donald J. February 29, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump at the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference | National Harbor, MD”. Ibid. Azar, Alex, and Anne Schuchat. February 26, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Conference”; Trump, Donald J., Alex Azar, Anthony Fauci, and Robert Redfield. February 29, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump at the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference | National Harbor, MD”; Birx, Deborah. March 4, 2020. “Press Briefing by Vice President Pence and Members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force”.

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16. Trump, Donald J. February 26, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Conference”; also, Trump, Donald J. March 3, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump Before Marine One Departure”. 17. Trump, Donald J. February 26, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Conference”; also, Trump, Donald J. February 29, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Conference”. 18. Fauci, Anthony. February 26, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Conference”. 19. Pence, Michael. March 4, 2020. “Press Briefing by Vice President Pence and Members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force”; also, Redfield, Robert. March 4, 2020. “Press Briefing by Vice President Pence and Members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force”. 20. Pence, Michael. March 4, 2020. “Press Briefing by Vice President Pence and Members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force”; Pence, Michael. March 5, 2020. “Remarks by Vice President Pence in Meeting at the 3 M Innovation Center | Maplewood, MN”; Pence, Michael. March 5, 2020. “Remarks by Vice President Pence and Governor Inslee in a Press Briefing | Tacoma, WA”; Pence, Michael. March 6, 2020. “Press Briefing by Vice President Pence and Members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force”; Pence, Michael. March 7, 2020. “Remarks by Vice President Pence in a Coronavirus Briefing with Cruise Line Executives and Port Directors | Ft. Lauderdale, FL”; Pence, Michael. March 9, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”; Pence, Michael. March 10, 2020. “Press Briefing by Vice President Pence and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force”. 21. Pence, Michael, and Anthony Fauci. March 6, 2020. “Press Briefing by Vice President Pence and Members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force”. 22. Pence, Michael, and Jerome Adams. March 9, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”. 23. Kudlow, Larry. March 10, 2020. “Press Briefing by Vice President Pence and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force”. 24. Trump, Donald J. March 11, 2020. “Memorandum on Making General Use Respirators Available”. 25. Trump, Donald J. March 13, 2020. “Proclamation on Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak”.

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117. Trump, Donald J. August 6, 2020. “Executive Order on Ensuring Essential Medicines, Medical Countermeasures, and Critical Inputs Are Made in the United States”; also, Trump, Donald J. May 5, 2002. “Remarks by President Trump at Honeywell International Inc. Mask Production Facility | Phoenix, AZ”. 118. Pence, Michael. July 9, 2020. “Remarks by Vice President Pence During a Chamber Roundtable to Discuss Economic Reopening | Malvern, PA”. 119. Trump, Donald J. May 21, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump at Ford Rawsonville Components Plant”. 120. Ibid. 121. Trump, Donald J. July 28, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump in Press Briefing | July 28, 2020”. 122. Trump, Donald J. October 3, 2020. “Proclamation on Made in America Day and Made in America Week, 2020”. 123. Trump, Donald J. September 30, 2020. “Executive Order on Addressing the Threat to the Domestic Supply Chain from Reliance on Critical Minerals from Foreign Adversaries”. 124. Ibid. 125. Ibid. 126. Trump, Donald J. March 13, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Conference”; Trump, Donald J. March 23, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”. 127. Trump, Donald J. March 31, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”; also, Trump, Donald J. April 7, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump at America CARES: Small Business Relief Update Meeting”; Trump, Donald J. April 8, “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”. 128. Trump, Donald J. March 31, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”; Trump, Donald J. April 1, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”; Trump, Donald J. April 6, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”, Trump, Donald J. April 7, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing | April 7, 2020”. 129. Trump, Donald J. April 10, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”.

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141. McEnany, Kayleigh. May 15, 2020. “New Members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force Announced”; Pence, Michael. July 1, 2020. “Press Briefing by Vice President Pence and Governor Ducey of Arizona on COVID-19 | Phoenix, AZ”. 142. Trump, Donald J. March 27, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”. 143. Trump, Donald J. June 23, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump at a Turning Point Action Address to Young Americans”. 144. Trump, Donald J. March 21, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”; Trump, Donald J. March 30, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in a Press Briefing”; Trump, Donald J. April 24, “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”; Trump, Donald J. April 27, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”; Trump, Donald J. April 28, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump on Supporting our Nation’s Small Businesses Through the Paycheck Protection Program”; Trump, Donald J. May 6, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump at Signing of a Proclamation in Honor of National Nurses Day”; Trump, Donald J. May 15, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump on Vaccine Development”; Trump, Donald J. June 18, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump During a Roundtable with Governors on the Reopening of America’s Small Businesses”; Trump, Donald J. July 27, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump in Press Briefing on COVID-19”; Trump, Donald J. August 8, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump in Press Briefing”. 145. Trump, Donald J. April 21, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”. 146. Trump, Donald J. April 22, 2020. “Proclamation Suspending Entry of Immigrants Who Present Risk to the U.S. Labor Market During the Economic Recovery Following the COVID-19 Outbreak”; Trump, Donald J. June 6, 2020. “Proclamation Suspending Entry of Aliens Who Present a Risk to the U.S. Labor Market Following the Coronavirus Outbreak”. 147. Trump, Donald J. April 22, 2020. “Proclamation Suspending Entry of Immigrants Who Present Risk to the U.S. Labor Market During the Economic Recovery Following the COVID-19 Outbreak”. 148. Trump, Donald J. April 16, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing”; also, Trump, Donald J. March 19, 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus

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References Finnemore, Martha, Michael C. Horowitz, Kenneth Scheve, Kenneth Schultz, and Erik Voeten, eds. 2020. “COVID-19 Online Supplemental Issue.” Special Issue, International Organization 74, no. S1. Laclau, Ernesto. 1990. “New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time.” In New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, edited by Ernesto Laclau, 3–85. London: Verso. Nymalm, Nicola. 2020. From ‘Japan Problem’ to ‘China Threat’? Rising Powers in US Economic Discourse. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Stavrakakis, Yannis. 2000. “On the Emergence of Green Ideology: The Dislocation Factor in Green Politics.” In Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies and Social Change, edited by David Howarth, Aletta J. Norval, and Yannis Stavrakakis, 100–118. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Weldes, Jutta. 1999. “The Cultural Production of Crises: U.S. Identity and Missiles in Cuba.” In Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities, and the

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Production of Danger, edited by Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey, Hugh Gusterson, and Raymond Duvall, 35–62. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Wojczewski, Thorsten. 2020. “Trump, Populism, and American Foreign Policy.” Foreign Policy Analysis 16 (3): 292–311.

Conclusion

Although crisis has long been debated in IR research, how the term should be approached systematically remained in the dark since diverse and at times controversial meanings have been attached to the concept. Tracing the development of crisis research reveals how the contested nature of crisis has always been recognized, but thorough systematizations nonetheless remained absent. Whereas traditional theories restrict their definitions of crisis to an ephemeral dimension, constructivist scholars already point towards the possibility that crisis entails a permanent dimension. This perspective becomes accentuated in Bob Jessop’s critical realist approach that introduces three dimensions of crisis, suggesting that ephemeral crises emerge from the interaction of causal mechanism in an independent material dimension. Dirk Nabers, in turn, presents perhaps the most sophisticated conceptualization of crisis that points towards the latter’s multidimensional character, without falling back on an independent materiality. He introduces the Laclauian concept of dislocation into crisis research which provides the basis for advancing a systematization of crisis as dislocation. Although dislocation has acquired vague and seemingly controversial meanings throughout Laclau’s reception, three dimensions of dislocation can be crystallized in Laclau’s work which build the cornerstones for a multidimensional framework of global crises. Laclauian dislocation thereby provides us with the conceptual tools to theorize three independent yet interconnected dimensions of crisis as dislocation: permanent dislocation, recurring dislocation, and ephemeral © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 N. Klopf, Global Crisis, Global Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25140-5

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dislocation. In a first sense, dislocation entails a permanent ontological dimension that circumscribes the impossibility of any discursive entity to become completely constituted. It therefore points towards the contingent character of naturalized discursive structures, the incompleteness of identity, the failure of society to achieve stability, and the constant disruption of institutionalizations through which social orders are attempted to be stabilized. Permanent dislocation thus presents a constitutive feature of the social that permanently renders stability impossible. However, as an ontological dimension, permanent dislocation cannot be encountered directly, but it becomes manifest in antagonistic relations, social struggles, and shifting meanings. Although complete constitution remains impossible due to the infinity of potential differential relations within the discursive, this is generally not recognized as the source of incompletion, but antagonistic discourses are constructed that allegedly prevent societies from acquiring complete constitution. Thereby, the presence of antagonistic others introduces a certain ontic lack into every sense of identity which demands to be resolved through the dissolution of the antagonistic camp. However, as societies will never acquire completion, the eradication of antagonistic others remains futile since antagonistic frontiers will merely be displaced to other antagonistic discourses. Therefore, processes of identification depict the vain attempt to acquire completion by identifying with particular objects that supposedly fill the ontic lacks that antagonistic others produce. Against this background, recurring ontic dislocation describes the incompleteness of articulatory processes, since every object remains insufficient to bring about the completion of identity due to the constitutive character of permanent dislocation. Even though it remains impossible to acquire complete identities, this incompletion does not immediately confront us, but it generally remains obscured behind sedimented discursive structures. It is only in times of ephemeral dislocation that the contingent nature of sedimented practices becomes disclosed such that the recurring dislocation that is inherent in every process of identification becomes visible. Ephemeral dislocation therefore denotes the disruption, or disclosure, of sedimented discursive structures. Furthermore, ephemeral dislocations are not determined by material alterations, but they are constructions that depend on established discursive structures. That is, ephemeral dislocation only emerges through processes of translocation that depict the infiltration of an antagonistic element into an allegedly stable discourse whereby the latter becomes

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disrupted, that is, subject to ephemeral dislocation. However, discourses do not remain in this state of overt instability, but they seek to regain stability through processes of institutionalization. Thereby, alternative articulations begin to fade, and the precarious character of discourses vanishes behind pretenses of completion and stabilization. However, since institutionalizations only obscure the permanent dislocation of the social, discourses remain destabilized structures whose vulnerability will again become visible in the resurfacing of ephemeral dislocations. Against these three dimensions of dislocation, crises must be approached as multidimensional phenomena. Even though the ephemeral dimension of dislocation confronts us most immediately, ephemeral disruptions can only be understood thoroughly when taking the discursive structures into account from which they emerge. This not only makes us realize the contingent nature of identificatory processes, but it also leads us to examine the precarious nature of antagonistic frontiers on which illusions of stable societies rely. An analysis of crises must therefore not stop at their ephemeral dimension, but it becomes essential to pay attention to recurringly insufficient articulations that precede the crisis construction as well as the permanently incomplete character of every social structure that cannot be overcome. Although permanent dislocation cannot be encountered directly, it provides us with the theoretical background to understand how discourses remain unstable structures that will never be completely stabilized, and therefore builds the theoretical basis for practical analyses. Finally, dislocation not only provides us with the conceptual tools to put the multidimensional character of crisis in concrete terms, but it makes it possible to theorize the complexity of social instability while leaving the concept of crisis behind. The terminology of crisis remains ultimately vague, with diverse meanings being attached to the term, both in scholarly and mundane usage. Even though crisis generally depicts some sort of social instability, it merely scratches the surface of the latter’s theoretical complexity and obscures its conceptual clarity, because crisis is adduced to specify all kinds of turmoil, disorder, upheaval, chaos, and confusion. In contrast, dislocation can be delineated into three distinct yet interrelated dimensions that capture thoroughly the multidimensional character of social instability. Thus, instead of being preoccupied with crisis terminology, it becomes necessary to scrutinize the complex nature of social instability through the lens of dislocation.

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Index

A Adams, Jerome, 188 Althusser, Louis, 19, 92–94, 96, 97, 108–110 Antagonism, xii, 14, 16, 18, 19, 57, 58, 67, 80–86, 89, 102, 110, 117, 118, 144, 147, 171, 188, 191 ontic antagonism, 83–85, 102, 117, 142, 143, 147 radical antagonism, 82, 83, 85, 86, 89, 101, 102, 144 Antagonistic antagonistic force, 67, 84–86, 102, 108 antagonistic frontier, 81, 84, 89, 95, 98, 108, 117, 118, 126, 214, 215 antagonistic other, xii, 57, 81, 82, 84–89, 91, 102, 103, 108, 144, 146, 147, 164, 167–169, 174, 185, 187, 214 antagonistic relation, xiii, 8, 9, 12, 14, 29, 47, 80, 82–89, 102,

103, 108, 109, 119, 129, 141–144, 146, 147, 170, 171, 173, 175–177, 179, 214 Anticipation, 1–3, 177 Antithesis, 143–147 Articulation, 9, 38, 39, 42, 48, 49, 57, 59, 61–63, 70, 80–82, 84, 91, 102, 103, 109, 115, 125, 135, 142, 145, 147, 154, 155, 157, 162, 168, 169, 173, 184, 215 Azar, Alex, 154, 159, 162 B Balibar, Étienne, 96, 97 Barthes, Roland, 29, 31, 35–41, 127 Becker, Douglas, 56 Bhaskar, Roy, 15 Blyth, Mark, 9, 10 Boin, Arjen, 3, 5, 7 Brecher, Michael, x, 2–6 Brewster, Ben, 92 Budryte, Dovile, 55, 56 Buhari-Gulmez, Didem, 56

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 N. Klopf, Global Crisis, Global Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25140-5

235

236

INDEX

C Capitalism, 60, 61, 93, 95–97, 99, 109, 113, 114 Catachresis, 144, 145, 147 Change, xi, 3–5, 10, 11, 31, 56, 66, 90, 93, 100, 114, 116, 168, 180 situational change, 3–5 Collocation, 129, 131–134, 136, 137 collocation analysis, 133–137 Concordance, 133, 134, 137, 138 concordance analysis, 135–137 Condensation, 11, 18, 37, 38, 108, 109, 112 Connolly, Michael E., 49 Constitution, xi, xii, 19, 20, 29, 30, 34, 44, 48–54, 61, 63–71, 79–83, 85–90, 102, 103, 107, 113, 140, 145, 146, 191, 214 Containment, 154–156, 162, 170, 181 Contingency, 38, 54, 56, 119, 140 Contradiction, x, 2, 11–13, 16, 18, 92–95, 107–109 Corpus linguistics, 128–131, 133, 135–137, 139, 151 Critical realism, x, 7, 15, 16, 19, 213 Croft, Stuart, 12 D Decision-making, x, 1–7, 9, 10, 13, 15 Decisive intervention, x, 11–14 Defense, 136, 152, 159, 168 Demand, 88–90, 99, 101, 103, 188, 214 Derrida, Jacques, 29, 31, 40, 41 Desire, 87–89, 103, 126 Difference, 31, 44, 65, 138–141, 143, 145 ontological difference, 47, 49 Differential relation, 34, 39, 40, 42, 48, 61, 70, 79–82, 84, 87, 100,

108, 112, 130, 140, 143, 145, 147, 214 Dillon, Michael, 48, 49 Disclosure, 115, 116, 118–120, 158, 168, 214 Discourse analysis, 127, 128 Discursive, the, xii, 43, 44, 48, 49, 53, 54, 63, 66, 67, 70, 80–82, 84, 87, 100, 214, 215 Disharmony, 97, 98, 100, 101, 110 Dislocation ephemeral dislocation, xiii, 21, 22, 112, 114–121, 127, 129, 147, 157, 158, 163–166, 168, 173, 174, 179, 182, 185–191, 214, 215 permanent dislocation, xiii, 21, 49, 66, 68–70, 79–82, 86–88, 91, 100–103, 109, 112, 113, 115, 117, 119–121, 127, 147, 158, 163, 179, 187, 190, 191, 213–215 recurring dislocation, xiii, 21, 91, 92, 99–101, 103, 107, 115, 147, 190, 213, 214 Dislocatory event, 50–56, 58, 59, 65, 90, 92, 111, 112 Displacement, 92–95, 97, 98, 107, 108 Dissociation, 97, 98

E Economy, 56, 89, 97, 115, 119, 120, 136, 146, 152, 158–160, 164–168, 174–176, 178, 180–183, 187, 190 Equivalence, 84, 108, 109, 138, 139, 141, 142, 144, 145, 178 Equivalential relation, 138, 139, 142, 145–147, 168, 178 Exteriority, 53, 99, 100

INDEX

Externalization, 85, 86, 88, 103, 169, 172, 189, 191

F Failure, xi, 11, 12, 20, 21, 66, 68, 114, 214 Fauci, Anthony, 148, 155, 156, 163, 188, 194 Firth, J.R., 131, 132 Foreign policy, x, 2, 6, 8, 175 Frequency analysis, 135, 136, 152, 153

G Glasze, Georg, 128, 133–135 Global, xi, xii, 8, 62, 88, 112, 135, 172, 178 Glynos, Jason, 17, 51–53, 64, 65, 111, 128 Growth, 89, 146, 176, 178, 181, 182, 184, 188 Gulmez, Seckin Baris, 56

H Hardie, Andrew, 132–134 Harris, Randy Allen, 143 Hart, Paul t’, 3 Hay, Colin, ix, x, 6, 9–14 Healthcare, 34, 37–39, 64, 101–103, 115, 116, 119, 120, 125, 136, 146, 151, 152, 154, 158–160, 162–164, 166–168, 172–180, 182–190 Hegemony, 60, 63, 64, 70, 96, 97, 99, 110, 141, 146, 165, 190 Heidegger, Martin, xii, 47–49 Hermann, Charles F., ix, x, 1–5 Hjelmslev, Louis, 29, 31–35, 37 Howarth, David, 17, 52–54, 64, 65, 79, 90, 111

237

Huss, Oksana, 56

I Idea, 9, 10, 12, 31, 32, 34, 131 Identification, 55, 68, 69, 87, 89–92, 99–103, 110, 114, 126, 131, 132, 135, 137, 145, 157, 159, 164, 179, 187, 188, 190, 191, 214 Immigration, 162, 163 Independence, 89, 137, 146, 166–168, 173, 175, 177–179, 185, 187, 188 Infinity, 34, 39, 40, 42–44, 48, 49, 61–63, 66, 70, 81, 82, 84, 87, 100, 112, 130, 140, 144, 147, 190, 214 Institutionalization, 49, 53, 56, 119, 120, 129, 147, 179, 182, 184, 214, 215 Interaction, x, 4, 5, 10, 16, 162, 213 Interest, 9, 10 Interpretation, x, 1, 2, 4–7, 13, 130, 131, 135–137

J Jakobson, Roman, 139 Jessop, Bob, x, 15–18, 213

K Kaunert, Christian, 56 Kudlow, Larry, 158

L Lacan, Jacques, 61, 63–66, 88 Lack, 20, 21, 58, 63–66, 68, 71, 82, 87–90, 120, 177, 187 ontic lack, 87–91, 101, 103, 167, 177, 179, 187, 188, 214

238

INDEX

ontological lack, 58, 66, 68, 69, 82, 87–89 Leek, Maria, 59 Lenin, Vladimir, 92, 95 Linguistics, 13, 19, 29–36, 41, 116, 133, 135, 138, 139, 142, 144, 145, 185

M Manufacturing, 166, 167, 175, 177, 178, 187 Marchart, Oliver, 54, 55, 80, 90 Marginalization, 153, 156, 186, 190 Marxism, 60 Materiality, x, xi, 6, 10, 13–19, 32, 35, 36, 41, 116, 185, 213 McCormick, James M., 4 McEnery, Tony, 132–134 Metaphor, 9, 139–147 Metonymy, 139–146 Military, xi, 3, 4, 89, 113, 152, 176–178 Mitigation, 154–156, 161, 162, 165, 172, 173, 180, 181, 183, 186 Morozov, Viacheslav, 59 Myth, 36–40, 44

N Nabers, Dirk, x–xii, 19–23, 45, 50, 55–57, 59, 60, 70, 71, 98, 112, 117, 118, 120, 121, 128, 213 National values, 1–3 Naturalization, 37, 38, 53, 115, 158 Navarro, Peter, 166 Negation, 66, 81–85, 102 Nohrstedt, Daniel, 4 Norval, Aletta, 51 Nymalm, Nicola, 57, 58, 128, 204

O Object, 31, 32, 35, 36, 40–42, 47, 66, 83, 87–92, 99–102, 116, 130, 134, 179, 214 Objectivity, x, 1, 5, 8, 14–16, 50, 64, 66, 67, 83, 134 Ontics, xii, xiii, 47, 49, 51–59, 61, 65, 67, 70, 79–81, 84–87, 90, 91, 101, 103, 113, 117, 118, 121, 144, 214 Ontology, xii, 15

P Paradigmatic, 137–140 Paraphrase, 130–135, 137, 138, 147 Pence, Mike, 121, 127, 155, 156, 160, 162, 178, 180, 183, 184, 189 Phillips, Warren, 5 Politicization, 17, 18 Positionality, 42, 82 Preparedness, 37, 38, 64, 91, 137, 146, 154, 156, 159, 160, 162–164, 166, 168, 172, 173, 177, 183–188 Prosperity, 146, 164, 165, 168, 169, 173, 180, 184–187 Psychoanalysis, 53, 60, 61 Public health, 33, 37, 38, 62, 126, 154, 158–161, 163, 165, 171, 172, 177, 178, 180, 181 Purport, 32, 34, 35

R Racism, 190 Real, the, 53, 54, 61, 63, 81, 82, 112 Redfield, Robert, 154 Relationality, 22, 42 Resende, Erica, 56, 57

INDEX

Resilience, 146, 154–156, 159, 163, 164, 168, 172, 173, 182, 184–186 Revolution, 92, 93, 95, 108–110, 113 Rhetoric, 139, 145 Rhetorical analysis, 129, 135, 137, 145 Rimkunas, Richard, 5 Russia, 95, 97, 98, 110, 112–114 S Saussure, Ferdinand de, 30–33, 35–37, 40, 42, 130, 137–139 Seabrooke, Leonard, 10, 13 Security, 8, 146, 152, 154, 155, 159, 162, 167, 175, 176, 178 Sedimentation, 17, 18, 37, 115 Sedimented practices, 20, 53, 114–116, 126, 180, 214 Semantic relation, 127, 128, 130, 131, 133–135, 137, 138, 141–143, 145, 147 Semiotics, 29–31, 34–36, 39–41, 44, 45 Sign, 30–41, 43, 44, 48, 63, 87, 100, 115, 130, 138–140, 142 Signification, 34–36, 38–43, 53, 54, 62, 82, 83, 101 Signified, 30–33, 35–43, 64, 81, 130 Signifier, 30–44, 53, 66, 69, 82, 84, 87, 100, 101, 103, 109, 117, 118, 120, 129, 130, 135, 136, 140–143, 145, 146, 151, 173 empty signifier, 109, 133, 141, 142, 144–147 Smith, Ja’Ron, 188 Social, the, xi, xii, 7, 17, 29, 44, 49, 56, 57, 60, 61, 67–71, 79, 81, 90, 91, 100, 107, 115, 118, 121, 142, 145, 147, 214, 215 Stavrakakis, Yannis, 52–54, 61, 62, 65, 111, 112, 172

239

Stengel, Frank A., xi, 57 Strength, 64, 137, 160, 164, 178, 180, 184 economic strength, 38, 91, 102, 116, 146, 153, 164–168, 172, 173, 175, 177–190 military strength, 89, 102, 146, 178, 179, 187 Subject, 13, 64, 65, 101, 134, 215 Subjectivity, 15, 132, 134 Subversion, 67, 80, 81, 83 Superiority, 64, 101, 103, 146, 159, 160, 163–168, 173, 177, 181, 184, 185, 187, 188 Synecdoche, 142–145, 147 Syntagmatic, 131, 137–140 T Teubert, Wolfgang, 129–135, 143 Threat, x, xi, 2, 3, 8, 85, 102, 146, 153, 154, 159, 164, 170, 175, 177, 191 Torfing, Jacob, 50, 51, 64 Transformation, xi, 5, 9–12, 16, 17, 70, 79, 116, 165 Transition, 114, 117, 119, 174, 182 Translocation, 117–119, 121, 168, 173, 174, 187, 214 Tropological, 139–147 Trotsky, Leon, 60, 61, 92, 113 Trump, Donald J., 38, 62–64, 88, 89, 91, 109, 116, 120, 127, 128, 146, 148, 152–155, 158–161, 163–167, 169–184, 189, 190, 194, 197, 199, 201, 208 U Uncertainty, 3, 9, 10 United States (U.S.), xiii, 8, 9, 14, 38, 39, 62–64, 88, 89, 91, 101–103, 109, 116, 118–120,

240

INDEX

127, 129, 135–137, 145, 146, 148, 151, 153–165, 167–191, 195, 197 W War, 3, 4, 8, 98, 110 Weible, Christopher M., 4 Weldes, Jutta, x, xiii, 6–9, 12–14, 126, 186

Widmaier, Wesley W., 6, 10, 13 Wodrig, Stefanie, 56 Wojczewski, Thorsten, 58, 204 World Health Organization (WHO), 170, 171

Z Žižek, Slavoj, 80–86