While Laclau seems not to be a 'philosopher in the strict sense', there is in fact a moment, (an excess) in his work of what I would call the strictly philosophical — and what Heidegger would have called 'thinking'. But where exactly to locate the 'strictly philosophical' — that which exceeds philosophy — in Laclau? I would contend that we will find it, amongst other places, in the numerous occasions where Laclau has recourse to the notion of the ontological difference — in the radical Heideggerian understanding of difference-as-difference, a notion which simultaneouly points at the a-byss of the (non)ground and thus has to be situated within the wider horizon of current post-foundational thinking. It is here that 'the philosophical' in the strict sense intervenes into the field of 'ordinary' political philosophy.

P. 56-7

¶ 4:47 PM