154 7 Post-Marx beyond Post-Marx: Autonomism and Discourse Theory Jack Zeljko Bratich Discourse had an easy entry but a difficult stay in Marxism. On the one hand, Marxist terms like consciousness, ideology, and culture had already provided fertile soil for discourse to take root. On the other hand, these very terms were relegated to a superstructural, even ephemeral, role in much of orthodox Marxism. The discursive turn was made possible by a crisis within Marxism itself: the failure of a certain explanatory model (the inevitability of proletarian revolution due to objective contradic- tions), the terrors unleashed by actually existing socialism (the USSR’s Cold War global expansion, the internments, the crushing of dissent), and the eruption of struggles during 1968 (around sexual desire, gender, ethnicity, race, and everyday life). All of these contributed, over time, to a questioning of fundamental commitments and epistemological certainties within Marxism. It was, in Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) term, a “de-struction” of the history of Marxism (p. 96). What resulted from this crisis garnered the name post-Marxism, refer- encing at least two tendencies: (1) the encounter of Marxism with various other “posts” (post-colonialism, post-structuralism, post-modernism); and (2) the uncertain status of this line of thought vis-à-vis its predeces- sors (in other words, not just existing after Marxism, but still in a relation- ship to its explanatory power). What is discourse after post-Marxism? What are the powers of dis- course that remain in the post-Marxism beyond post-Marxism? 1 In this chapter, I wish to find a fruitful role for discourse by examining an encounter between heterodox Marxisms. 2 I begin with what is often considered the pinnacle of discourse-oriented post-Marxism, the work of Ernesto Laclau (with and without Chantal Mouffe). Key components of his emphasis on discourse are discussed – that it relies primarily on semiotic and linguistic processes, begins with separation and difference, 9780230276994_08_cha07.indd 154 9780230276994_08_cha07.indd 154 9/17/2011 2:47:58 PM 9/17/2011 2:47:58 PM