WG 01 -Discourse Theory and its Interlocutors
Coordinators: Nadir Lara Júnior, Felipe Corral de Freitas, Kamila Nascimento and Murilo Paiotti Dias
Email: simposiolaclaugt1@gmail.com
Ernesto Laclau’s discourse theory has the publication of ‘Hegemony and Socialist Strategy’ (Verso 1985), written in collaboration with Chantal Mouffe, as its landmark of development. From that moment until 2014, the year of his death, we witnessed almost 30 years of a remarkable theoretical development. Laclau established dialogues with leading philosophers and theoreticians from different perspectives. Even considering his decease, discourse theory is alive and vibrant, stimulating the interlocution with other approaches and perspectives. For this reason, this working group opens up a space for papers that intend to establish exchanges and connections between discourse theory and other theoretical perspectives.
WG 02 – Discourse Theory and Social Mobilizations in Latin America
Coordinators: Daniel de Mendonça, Michele Diana da Luz and Sandra Regina Barbosa Parzianello
Email: simposiolaclaugt2@gmail.com
Based on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory, this working group (WG) proposes a debate on the contemporary political ways in the context of Latin America societies. The WG focuses its attention on studies about contestation and popular movements, especially, but not exclusively, those that, in Laclau’s sense, can be considered populists. The objective is to receive theoretical or empirical articles which develop most different social mobilisations, independently of their ideological connotations. Aiming at approaches of various social antagonisms that arise in a context in which an infinitude of identities has to be considered, it will be welcome papers informed by post-structuralist theoretical perspective for the more accurate comprehension of such phenomena. Therefore, the WG intends to be a space for studies informed by Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory and also aims at receiving articles that establish dialogues between the Laclauian approach and those from his interlocutors or critics.
WG 03 – Discourse Theory, Science and Technology
Coordinators: Léo Peixoto Rodrigues, Camila Prates and Carolina Costa dos Santos
Email: simposiolaclaugt3@gmail.com
Discourse theory is an important theoretical, methodological and also epistemological tool for the knowledge and the investigation of theoretical and empirical phenomena in transdisciplinary camps of science. Ernesto Laclau – thinker in the areas of philosophy, politics and social sciences in general – proposes a theory based on post-structuralist epistemology, founded in the vision that social phenomena can be conceived and studied as discursive practices. In this sense, on argue the impossibility of the ultimate foundation of society, and such impossibility is due to the contingency of all foundation. The objective of this working group is to foster discussions about ongoing or concluded studies, that somehow link Laclau’s discourse theory to techno scientific issues, which involve multiple approaches related to Social Studies in Science and Technology.
WG 04 – Discourse Theory and Education
Coordinators: Alice Casimiro Lopes, Gabriel Bandeira Coelho and Letícia Baron
Email: simposiolaclaugt4@gmail.com
Discourse Theory – initiated by Ernesto Laclau in the second half of the 20th Century, in post-structuralist and post-foundationalist matrices – has changed the scenario of the investigations of a set of social phenomena, crossing disciplinary borders and becoming, in this sense, an important theoretical-strategy perspective for the interpretation of the contemporary society. From the development of a theoretical conception focused on the centrality of the political and in a critique of the social and fixed foundations, discourse theory has been progressively incorporated by the Education field, mainly questioning the very basis of the educational project of the modernity, provocating deadlocks in the ordinary forms of comprehension of educative purposes. The incorporation of the post-structuralist and post-foundationalist approaches to the Educational area are encouraging several discussions that undermine sedimented notions of critical subject, emancipatory education, education submission to economy, separation between culture and politics and the formation of supposed knowledge as universal. Education, and particularly the Curriculum area, has been interpellated by discourses and antagonisms that destabilise the modern project of school and critical education, reactivating others meanings for democracy, politics and educative projects. Accordingly, this working group intends to gather works that adopt discourse theory as the main strategic and theoretical approach in the studies in the Education field.
WG 5 – Discourse Theory, Methods and Research Techniques
Coordinators: Bianca Linhares, Everton Garcia da Costa and Larissa Russo Gonçalves
Email: simposiolaclaugt5@gmail.com
Ernesto Laclau is one of the most prominent thinkers in the second half of the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st, being internationally recognised by the richness of his work. Based on a post-structuralist, post-foundationalist and post-Marxist epistemological matrix, Laclau dialogues with some of the most influential authors in the vast Social and Human Sciences camp, such as Derrida, Lacan, Heidegger, Butler, among others. The discourse theory (DT), proposed by the author, investigates the antagonisms and political struggles that are on the base of contemporary society. More specifically, using this vast conceptual architecture, the author seeks to understand how political struggles are built, as well as the articulation process of discursive practices. Considering such theoretical and methodological richness, DT generates a diversity of uses of methods and research techniques in different areas of the Social and Human Sciences, such as Political Science, Education, Sociology, Social Studies of Science and Technology. Accordingly, this working group intends to open a space for debate and reflection about different methodological aspects related to studies based on DT as their main theoretical reference.