Hegemony is one of the most widely diffused concepts in the contemporary social sciences and humanities internationally, interpreted in a variety of ways in different disciplinary and national contexts. However, its contemporary relevance and conceptual coherence has recently been challenged by various theories of ‘posthegemony’. This article offers a critical assessment of this theoretical initiative. In the first part of the article, I distinguish between three main versions of posthegemony – temporal, foundational and expansive – characterized by different understandings of (...) the temporal and logical implications of hegemony. I then offer a critical assessment of the shared presuppositions of these theories, including their ‘pre-Gramscianism’, their indebtedness to Laclau and Mouffe’s formulation of hegemony, and their characterization of hegemony in terms compatible with modern theories of sovereignty. I conclude by arguing that the contradictions and oversights of the debate on posthegemony encourage us to undertake a reassessment of the real historical complexity of hegemonic politics and its different traditions of conceptualization. (shrink)

This review-essay analyses John Beverley’s post-subalternist perspective on the intertwinement of theoretical discourse and politics – so-called Latinamericanism – in the Latin American context. This conjuncture is characterised by themarea rosada, or pink tide, of moderate leftist governments. I contend that Beverley grasps the change introduced by this trend and lucidly criticises the neoconservative, moderate, and deficient political implications of different theoretical views. This contribution notwithstanding, I argue that Beverley’s theoretical project fails effectively to conceptualise this political tide as an (...) object of theoretical inquiry: namely, to grapple with themarea rosada’s Latinamericanism as a populist political logic that simultaneously neutralises and drives socialist transformation. (shrink)