Laclau and Mouffe, Bourdieu, neo-liberalism, and the mass media

This chapter scrutinizes Bourdieu’s sociology and Laclau and Mouffe’s work on political discourse, to outline a discourse conception of neo-liberalism. It explains how neo-liberal discourse works, how it becomes hegemonic and what kind of relationship holds between its form, content, and potency, and the material interests of different classes and groups in society. Also, it describes how neo-liberal discourse gets disseminated and naturalised by the mass media, through political advertising and other channels. Finally, it raises the question how an alternative discourse can be constructed by oppositional forces to challenge the hegemony of neo-liberalism. The discussion is placed against the context of major political developments of the 20th and 21st centuries, showing how politicians such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump have been able to mobilize combinations of words and images to persuade voters to accept as common sense that the market is a dynamic, positive force and the State a negative and stifling one.