From Hegemony to Post-hegemony and Back: Extimate Trajectories

Throughout the last two decades, discussions around “post-hegemony” have stimulated exchanges around different theorizations of “hegemony” and their limits – not only the one by Antonio Gramsci, but also the predominantly discursive reformulation put forward by Laclau & Mouffe. Very recently, a new article by Peter Thomas on post-hegemony (2020) is triggering new debates on the issue. In this paper, Thomas’s contribution is, first, presented and discussed. In the second section, certain issues that have been recently raised from a post-hegemonic perspective vis-à-vis Thomas’s intervention and beyond are thematized. These two exercises provide an opportunity to clarify further, by way of conclusion, certain issues at stake in the ensuing debate from an Essex School perspective.