ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to bring some insights from post-structuralist theory into direct relation with the problem that Third Way theorists pose for themselves, namely the problem of articulating a politics appropriate for an era in which neither socialism nor the nation state appears to provide an adequate frame for progressive action. It suggests that the traditional linkage between socialism and the nation state depends on a particular conception of politics, a conception motivated by nostalgia for the Greek polis. Communitarianism, civic republicanism, and the Third Way all embody this nostalgia. The chapter also suggests that the politics of nostalgia is the dominant form of contemporary politics, a form that is keyed into images of the polis on the one hand and the sovereign on the other. Third Way politics is a bid for what the Gramscians call 'hegemony': that is, for a certain discursive articulation that brings differences into a relation that makes the particular appear universal.
