Archaeology, Genealogy and Hegemony: a Reply to Mulligan David Howarth University of Essex In ‘An Archaeology of Political Discourse?’ I examined the possibility of, and con- ditions for, rendering Foucault’s archaeological method appropriate for ideologico- political analysis. Shane Mulligan takes issue with three aspects of my account, namely, the application of archaeology to the ideological realm, the translation of concepts, and the issue of political subjectivity. The first part of my reply tackles his initial objection and the next addresses the other two criticisms. Archaeology and Ideology Mulligan’s first objection yields a stronger and a weaker thesis. The stronger thesis questions the very idea of an archaeology of ideologies. Foucault, of course, does not share Mulligan’s impossibility thesis, as he countenances numerous ways of employing archaeology in other domains. In my article, I evaluated two attempts to extend archaeology to the analysis of ideology and politics, and found both wanting. My conclusion was not that this rules out the enterprise in principle, only that Foucault’s particular endeavours are not convincing. Instead, I outlined three conditions for a revisionist account of archaeology. The first two deal with the role of ideology and archaeology respectively, and the third with the construction of appropriate concepts. First, I reconfigured Foucault’s conception of ideology by bracketing a purely epis- temological definition of ideology, which dismisses ideological discourse as merely a false set of beliefs, and developed a neutral and more expansive conception in which ideologies are understood as practices (both ‘discursive’ and ‘non- discursive’) that partly constitute subjective identities. By contrast, Mulligan’s views on ideology are a little difficult to fathom. On the one hand, he suggests that part of the archaeological project is to ascertain what ideology is. 1 On the other hand, he claims that ‘the ideological has no “method” ’, and that ideologists ‘have little grounds for their claims’. This is certainly not Foucault’s view, who is happy to claim that ‘ideology is not exclusive of scientificity’, and who states that the ‘role of ide- ology does not diminish as rigour increases and error is dissipated’ (AK, p. 186). Moreover, the practical effect of Mulligan’s claim is to render political ideologies beyond analysis altogether, when part of my project is to develop the conceptual tools to analyse their structures – their logics, concepts and argumentative patterns – and to understand their content and grip, so as to subject them to evaluation and critique. POLITICAL STUDIES: 2003 VOL 51, 436–440 © Political Studies Association, 2003. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.