This book develops a discourse theory of crisis and change in global politics. Crisis is conceptualized as structural dislocation, resting on difference and incompleteness. Change is seen as the continuous but ultimately futile effort to gain a full identity. The incompleteness and contingent character of the social represents the most important condition for democratic politics to become possible and for a theory of crisis and change to become conceivable. In this new understanding, crisis loses its everyday meaning of a periodically occurring event. Instead, crisis becomes an omnipresent feature of the social fabric. It represents the absence of ground, of social foundation, and it rests within the subject as well as within the social whole.
Introduction
Part I: Crisis and Change
1. Crisis
2. Change
Part II: Reality and Difference
3. Reality
4. Difference
Part III: Hegemony and Social Change
5. Hegemony
6. Discourse Analysis
Part IV: Crisis and Change in the War on Terror
7. Dislocation
8. Hegemony: Towards a discourse theory of crisis and change
For anyone interested in a deeper appreciation of crisis discourses, this thought-provoking book is a mul#@