The Theory of Discourse of the Essex School: the basis of contemporary theory of hegemony

Abstract

The main goal of this article is to explain the basis of the theory of discourse of the Essex School. More concretely, we will analyse its main categories and appraise its strengths and weaknesses. Firstly, we will focus on the state of the art. Through that, we are going to describe their abstract concepts, explain their main features and give an overall view of the main academic debates on the topic. Secondly, we will analyse their weaknesses from a critical approach. From our point of view, in contrast to the opinion of the most relevant members of the school, they have built their theory on an empty ontology. Thus, although their main strength lies in the study of hegemony and the construction of new identities, they do not take into account the material basis of social relations.