Conclusion

This short book is an attempt to explain some of the consequences of work in process. It cannot pretend to completeness or finality. Three definite areas for new work emerge from it. The first relates to the order of discourse — the importance in theoretical work of separating questions of the order of connection of concepts from questions of the order of connection of the social relations specified by concepts. The creation of non-rationalist forms of discursive order and non-empiricist forms of analysis of conditions of existence and effectivity are the primary problems engendered by this theoretical condition. An important caution should be offered here: this position on the order of discourse must not itself become a legislative criterion, a substitute for epistemology. The second area relates to the mode in which problems for analysis are generated in Marxist discourses. The political conditions of the appearance of questions and the status of questions as effects of certain types of political position and calculation require theorisation and critical analysis. The third area of work relates to the formation of concepts of definite social formations. It is only at this level that the concepts of relations of production, of classes, etc., acquire political pertinence which justifies their formation in discourse.