Empty signifiers: new approaches to discourse analysis in infrastructure

In this IGDC webinar will consider how the study of connective infrastructures, past and present - e.g., roads, railways, pipelines, oil drills, buildings, TV stations - can be enriched by the theoretical lens of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The speakers will reflect on the framing of such large-scale projects as ‘empty signifiers’, in whose interests this is done, for what purposes, and what insights a critical discourse analysis approach may reveal. Through detailed engagement with Laclau and Mouffe’s work, we will explore examples of materialist discourse analysis applied to infrastructural developments in places ranging from Azerbaijan, Mozambique, and the UK.
The panel will examine the theoretical and political implications of these questions through the notion of an ‘empty signifier’: a free-floating container of multiple meanings, histories, and practices. The concept makes it possible to explain how certain words or phrases acquire political importance, and how ongoing political struggles seek to establish the definition of certain terms, giving them relevance for social processes. As claims for their economic necessity and appropriateness ebb and flow, such infrastructures can harbour different meanings to different actors, helpfully organising their conflicting interests and concerns, while pointing to a desired future of progress, connectivity and security that may support some but exclude others. The sites and projects we will examine are located in different settings but share common features as powerful imaginary spaces for advancing disparate - and even conflicting - political projects and specific configurations of government and state-society relations. Tracing their discursive framing can reveal much about such imaginations, their traction and staying power, along with the spaces for political intervention and resistance that they offer.