ABSTRACT
Signifying theory, politics tints bears a meaning that is: to signify and simultaneously to understand/signify theory_politics as signifying. Signifying theory, politics/queer could, in this sense, provisionally be understood as seizing and reinforcing the inextricable paradox of signification as such incessantly seizing and reinforcing, 'against/ by all odds', inextricable paradox, as necessarily antagonistic and hegemonic and as radically opening agonistic dynamics of negotiation. With the term hegemonic, which draws on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's modification of Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony, the chapter emphasizes that, in contrast to romantic ideas of oppositional/subversive positions 'outside' power, there is no space 'beyond' or 'free' of power relations. Thus, a common definition of hegemony as dominance, which attributes power to discrete positions or identities imagined as unambiguously discernable entities, ignores that, much to the contrary, identities are perpetually generated and rearticulated in ongoing processes of negotiation.
