Hegemony and subject. an ontological understanding from the thought of Franz Hinkelammert

Abstract

This article presents an evaluation of the contributions of Franz Hinkelanmmert's thought to an ontological foundation of Hegemony. It starts from evaluating the flaws of the Hegemony Theory exposed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe for the understanding of the changes operated in Hegemony as a social process in Latin America. This supposes a discursive reduction of Hegemony for the sake of an emergential ontological foundation. However, this epistemic formulation does not allow the establishment of an instance of material limit to the process of Hegemony as a process of conflict resolution. Thus the analysis of the material practices of work and necessity that determine the political conflict is challenged. Faced with this, we explore the conception of the human being as a present subject in the categorical system of Franz Hinkelammert's ontological proposal. The human being as subject appears as a principle of empirical impossibility that allows the critique of the models of casual objectivity, economic efficiency and political legality that determine the production of subjectivity. From this structure is based a compression to the subject as an absence, material ontological comprehension that would serve as base to a conceptualization acontecimental of the Hegemony. An indispensable element to a response to the processual formulation of Hegemony and to the understanding of political subjectivity as an instance of tension and transformation of the orders of institutional legitimacy.