mouffe

 Research on the provenance of artworks has become one of the most significant areas of museum activity today. During the institutional reforms of ICOM (1971–1974), provenance and ethical considerations in acquiring artworks emerged as primary concerns. Today, provenance research and restitution processes are essential for museums. This study analyzes the exhibition A Future for the Past at Kunsthaus Zürich, examining the challenges museums face in confronting hidden histories, ensuring transparency, and adhering to ethical codes. Featuring the Emil Bührle Collection, this exhibition provides an opportunity to rethink the display of artworks as a discursive process. The article also explores how hegemonic museum discourse engages with controversial issues. The primary objective is to investigate the role of museums in shaping historical, political, ethical, and social values in the representation of artworks. Using Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse analysis, the research argues that all museum practices derive meaning within specific discursive frameworks. A Future for the Past is examined as a meaningful intervention within competing discourses.The central research questions are:What discourses can be identified within the Kunsthaus Zürich? How does the museum attempt to temporarily stabilize meaning through this exhibition? Which discourse is dominant in the museum’s discursive order, and what identity is created or reinforced for the museum?

The study identifies and describes existing discourses using archival documents, exhibition catalogs, interviews, curatorial panels, and other sources. According to Laclau and Mouffe, discourse includes linguistic and non-linguistic elements, such as selection, display, arrangement, and categorization. The study examines how these discourses form, structure, and become hegemonic.

Findings suggest that within the discursive order of the Kunsthaus Zürich, competing and conflicting discourses can be identified. The discourses analyzed in this study include:1. Historical Discourse: While A Future for the Past claims to focus on provenance and Jewish collectors during World War II, critics argue that it downplays the fate of looted artworks’ original owners.
2. Artistic Discourse: Frames the museum as a space for aesthetic appreciation, separating art from historical and ethical concerns. Kunsthaus Zürich follows the “art for art’s sake” approach, emphasizing “masterpieces” and “stylistic diversity.”
3. Ethical Discourse: This discourse seeks to balance the contentious provenance of artworks with the museum’s aesthetic mission.
4. Institutional (Museum) Discourse: Emphasizes the museum’s role as a public institution, engaging audiences through interactive spaces and discussions on historical and ethical issues. During controversies, the museum employs hegemonic interventions to manage tensions
Two dominant macro-discourses emerge:Artistic Discourse, emphasizing autonomy and neutrality of artworks.
Ethical Discourse, stressing the museum’s responsibility for provenance.
The conflict between these discourses represents a broader struggle between “ethical responsibility” and “artistic beauty.” Kunsthaus Zürich prioritizes displaying artworks, while ethical discourse critiques its decision to exhibit the Emil Bührle Collection.
Institutional discourse mediates between artistic and ethical discourses. The museum legitimizes displaying “artistic masterpieces” from World War II while justifying the Bührle Collection as part of collective memory. This approach marginalizes but does not eliminate ethical discourse, maintaining it as a secondary concern. The Bührle Foundation’s statement (June 14, 2024) reaffirms the museum’s commitment to ethical museum guidelines, incorporating “justice” and “adherence to ethical codes” into its mission.

Just as A Future for the Past challenges the museum’s role in handling controversial collections, this study invites reflection on provenance research and museum responsibilities. Analyzing how museum discourses emerge and evolve reveals how museums manage and represent collections and adapt to social changes. Future research should explore museums’ broader role beyond exhibiting artworks, analyze historical museum discourses, and assess adherence to principles such as equity, social justice, and transparency. These studies can contribute to understanding how museums navigate contemporary challenges.

Novels, As cultural products, represent a society with various discourses. Each discourse, with its own configurations, is constantly trying to make its meanings hegemonic. The current research is an attempt to analyze the discourse semiotics of gender with an emphasis on the theory of Laclau and Mufehe in the two novels "This street has no speed bumps" and "Rahesh". The main issue in the current research is how "gender" is represented in these novels. Also, how gender thoughts are reflected through the author's mentality in writing the novel and what is the author's point of view towards them. In terms of methodology, it is a descriptive and qualitative research, which uses library method to collect data. According to this method, the analysis of the novel includes three levels: textual analysis, intertextual analysis, contextual analysis. Textual analysis is dedicated to the semiotics of the novel's characters and finding the discourse order of the novel; In intertextual analysis, each novel is compared with novels of the same period; in contextual analysis, the relationship between the novel and larger social space is examined. Finally, the analysis of the propositions revealed that the main concern and theme of the novels; The obvious conflict between tradition and modernity lies in the social construction of gender, which is implicitly included in the inner layers of the text and lexical reflection, and the main character of the novels at all stages are in the conflict between the biological construction of gender and its social construction.

Persian proverbs, as a form of folk literature, reflect the cultural and intellectual inclinations of the people towards peace and non-violence. Considering the importance of revisiting cultural heritage to understand the capacities for peace, coexistence and reducing social conflicts, this study extracts and categorizes examples of social tolerance in Persian proverbs, including religious tolerance, behavioral tolerance, passive tolerance, and general tolerance. Utilizing the concept of discourse as outlined by Laclau and Mouffe, this study reveals aspects of the dominant intellectual patterns reflected in these proverbs, identifying sources of power and factors influencing the representation of social tolerance. The research findings are categorized according to Peter King's components of social tolerance and by employing the discourse analysis method, the impact of religious, individualistic and peace discourse on social tolerance as an element of public morality is explored. The results indicate that the discourse of peace and its associated humanitarian tendencies are most frequently represented as markers of social tolerance in the Persian proverbs studied.

In recent years, the large-scale Arbaeen Walking Ceremony with the presence of tens of millions of people from different countries and nationalities has attracted the attention of analysts and researchers, and researchers have studied it from the perspective of religious, sociological, anthropological, political and strategic studies. In this research, the discourse model of "Ernest Laclau " and "Chantal Mouffe" has been used to study Arbaeen Walking. The main question of the article is, what are the discourse markers of the Arbaeen walk in individual and collective dimensions? According to the results of this research, in the Arbaeen Walk, keeping alive the memory of Imam Hussain (a.s.) and the martyrs of Karbala is a central sign that can lead to the articulation of other signs by attracting floating signs and in individual and collective dimensions. Also, the Arbaeen Walk has the capacity to marginalize other discourses such as Secularism and Takfirism based on hegemony and discourse competition. The current research was conducted with a qualitative approach and discourse analysis method.

Sarbedaran movement (873Ah-737Ah) is the most important movement of Iran in eighth century. Insecurity and transience of this transient government and its ideological ups and downs raise a big question for researchers. The discourse of this movement, like every socio-political discourse, has two non-established stages (before the establishment of government) and established stage (after the establishment of the government). We have tried in this article to analyze Sheikh Hassan Jouri􀀁̓s letter to Amir Mohammad Beiek, Arqoun shah􀀁̓s brothers as one of the most important documents of Sarbedaran non-established discourse and to answer some above questions such as the influence of spatial and temporal conditions in this movement , its political and religious concepts and unifying factor to the scattered popular forces following a single discourse. To answer these questions we will use Laclau and Moff analysis method in which all the concepts of a discourse such as the movement of dislocation of signifiers, political subject, social myths and conception, accessibility and credibility, otherness, empty signifier and hegemony are formed around "Nodal Point". After the reviews, it becomes clear that in non-established discourse of Sarbedaran Anti-authoritarianism and equality are the nodal points. Sheikh Khalifeh and Sheikh Hassan Jouri as the most important characters of this discourse have created Shiite anti-authoritarianism and mythical equality and converted it to social concept relying on Shiism and Sufism discourses. Other concepts of this discourse are also focused around these nodal points. During the article some other historical sources and documents in addition to this letter have used to self-inclusive analysis.

The field of culture has been one of the most sensitive areas in Iran. Governments usually, design and present a specific cultural discourse for expanding their hegemonic domination. In Iran, governments have had two continuous periods of activity, and the cultural programs of governments are usually in the same direction, and we see a kind of discursive continuity. in the ninth and tenth governments  . The current article is qualitatively performed, and weuse  theory of discourse analysis by Laclau and Mouffe, following the frameworks of the cultural discourses of the ninth and tenth governments, as well as comparing the cultural discourse of the two states. Findings of the research indicate a gross difference in the cultural discourse of the ninth and tenth government. , in the ninth government. Its main features are to expand the fundamentals of the revolution, cope with the cultural invasion, and . In the tenth government, global cultural management was recognized as the central platform of the program, and the ineffectiveness of jurisprudenceand . are of the main cornerstones of cultural discourseframework

Hafiz’ discourse efforts to represent his age’s transcendental discourse, and resistance to its semantic system, with the aim of creating otherness and delegitimization , can be explained under the title of resistance discourse model. This article tries to offer a discourse-based study of resistance literature in Hafez’ Ghazals based on the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe and Soltani’s discourse semiology model, by relying on a descriptive-analytical method. With this method, the work is explicated from textual, intertextual, and texture points of view. The main question is what the represented discourse systems in the text are and what relation they have with resistance discourse. It has become clear that there are four different sub-discourses in the text, namely domination, resistance, mysticism, and sufism, and the major existing semantic conflict of the text is the result of the confrontation between the sub-discourse of resistance and hegemonic discourse of the government of the time. The representation of identity specifications of socio-political strata related to the dominant discourse, with the aim of influencing the subjects’ minds, is among the discourse efforts of the author (Hafez) which has in its totality led to the explanation of the power image and its discourse identity.

One of the qualitative methods that political science scholars interest in examining its concepts and developments is the Laclau and Mouffe discourse analysis method. The main question of this research is how to use and apply the method of discourse analysis in the field of political science, and how and to what extent can discourse analysis be used to understand and explain political science? The claim and assumption of this research is possibility of using the knowledge of discourse analysis in various fields of political science is not completely eliminated, the application of the discourse-analysis approach in the field of politics opens up new horizons and yields significant methodological and theoretical results

Discourse analysis is one of the humanities methods which analyzes the implicit concepts of power and ideology in different contexts. This understanding is conducted through different techniques of discourse. One of the most important approaches of discourse, is Laclau and Mouffe’s which adopts the concepts such as the separation of fixed and floating signifier, articulation, moments and elements, opposition and otherness to explore the implicit purposes in the texts. In this study, by using Laclau and Mouffe’s, we tried to analyze the “roots” novel discourse to indentify the approaches in the postcolonial literature. The views of people like Edward Said, Frantz Fanon and Homi Bhabha explain and interpret the post-colonial discourse analysis that would help us in this article. The main objective of this study is to determine the effective signifiers on the dispute between the two discourses: colonial and slavery. The novel, studies on several elements of American culture colonial and colonial African culture and their different.Slabs floating through the articulation of a discourse that is considered Laclau and Mouffe through a chain of equivalence to the original slab or nodes-are connected. In fact, each of these slabs of by the clamp in place and revolves around a specific discourse, its meaning is fixed and everything in this area of discussion diversity rather than be rejected and the discursive field drives. Evidence such as racism, modernity, wisdom, slavery and forced US language and culture around the nodes main articulation of colonial and colonial discourse of the day skeptics.

The growing popularity of satellite channels among Iranian audiences has doubled the necessity of studying the content of these channels. In this regard, few studies have examined satellite channels for kids and the content they offer.
The growing popularity of satellite channels among Iranian audiences has increased the necessity of studying the content of these channels- In particular, the children channels which has been barely researched. Regarding this matter, Gem Junior Channel as the most famous satellite channel for broadcasting child’s programs in Persian Language was selected for studying discursive order of desirable feminine identity- as it is the area of dispute among many discourses for setting their meanings in that discursive order. By using analytical capabilities of Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory three Gem Junior programs (Barbie: Life in the Dream house, Sky Dancers and Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated) were studied. In the Barbie animation "Beauty and attractiveness" was recognized as central signifier and discursive signifier of "sociability" was recognized as central signifier in two other programs. As a general conclusion of studying the discourse of this channel, "sociability" turned out to be the central signifier of the discursive order of feminine identity in the studied programs. This is while other peripheral signifiers such as “individualism”, “inter-sexual relations” (free, non-official and friendship-based relationships), Ethical, beauty and attraction (by this definition: free, half nude and body-revealing dresses) and … constitute the discursive system of the network within discursive order of feminine identity. this discourse imagine some others for itself were mostly represented in the form of , unethical, wicked and evil, and inhumane identities and due to absolute Reprehensible of these signifiers, other less evident signifiers such as unsociability, unemotional and etc joined with them. In fact. These discursive bonds are making main Conflict areas in discourse of Gem junior channel.

The 2000s was an important decade in the history of Iranian cinema because some important movies were made at this time which represented the major discourse dominating Iranian society. “Felicity Land” is among them. This film received many journalistic reviews so far, but no academic research about this film has been conducted yet. However, focusing on this and other films made by Miri, this paper is to answer the question that what discourses are represented in this film and what are the relationships between these discourses and the macro-discourses dominating Iranian society in this decade. In fact, the purpose of the paper is to shed light on the complexities of the discourses determining the Iranians daily life and the way they are represented in Maziar Miri's works. Theoretically and methodologically, the paper is based on Ernesto Lanclau and Chantal Mouffe’s post-structural discourse theory and Soltani's (2014) Discourse-Semiotic Approach for studying films. The findings show that among the macro discourses of Modernity and Tradition governing on Iranian society in its modern history, the film is more inclined to represent the modernity discourse. In addition, the film shows a discursive conflict between men and women, women and husbands, and parents and children.

This article aims at investigating and analyzing 50 selected wills of Iranian martyrs of Holly Defense and concentrates on particular discourses and their capacity of articulation using Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory. As a starting point for answering these questions, the pivotal axes and themes of these wills are extracted and then it is identified which signs have privileged position and how they are defined in their relations with other signs in that specific discourse. Besides, we have discussed what meanings are kept and fixed and also what potential meanings are excluded by these wills through putting the elements in certain relations with each other. The main themes and axes of the wills included: 'supreme leadership and Imam Khomeini', 'anti-imperialism', 'events of Karbala', 'Hijab', 'Friday prayer and collective prayer', 'negating mundane world' and 'mourning for Karbala martyrs instead of mourning for the martyrdom of the will writer. 'Supreme leadership and Imam Khomeini' is considered as the main signifier around which other signifiers are articulated and get meaning. According to Laclau and Mouffe, the meaning of peripheral signifiers is fixed by articulating them around the central signifier and main point. Hence, we can talk of 'Martyr's discourse' which make warriors the subjects who think about nothing but afterlife; subjects who have already embraced death before they are really murdered and consider dying in the Holly Defense as dying in events of Karbala.

The goal of this article is the Recognition of middle class discourses in mostafa mastoor's letters. The recognition of this discourses have examined the representation of urban middle-class life at last. In the analytical section of this article, with reference to two famous novels of this writer, it is examined the techniques of middle class life representation and using the discourse theory of laclau and mouffe, it is acknowledged the nodal points and network meaning which is produced the narratives in this two novels. This study shows that the constrictive discourse of this two novels have been representing such a middle class identity which is belong to the more immense traditional and modern discourses in IRAN. Answering to the question that how much this representation are altered or deviation from the reality of modern middle class life in Iran needs to more vast and deep social and literary studies.

This paper is an attempt to indicate how constitutionalism discourse is formed and what is its effect on Qajar pictorial rules, considering Lacla and Mouffe’s discourse theory. Laclau and Mouffe consider social relations as a discursive construction but this construction is never finished or complete. There are always other meaning potentials which can challenge and transform the structure of the discourse. They have constructed their theory by combining and modifying two major theoretical traditions, Marxism and structuralism. They created theoretical concepts like “articulation”, “nodal point”,”floating signifier”,”element”, “moment” “chains of equivalence”,”chains of difference” and they mentioned that a discourse attempts to collect series of the signs in a relational net and fix meaning in a partial way, therefore it creates unified system of meaning. Each discourse establishes a totality in which sign is fix as a moment through its relations to other signs or as a fishing-net. This is done by the exclusion of all other possible meanings that the sings could have had.According to this approach we will discuss three period of Iran’s history by considering and contemplating newspapers. Especially we will highlight the conflict between the government’s discourse and the opposition’s discourse in these periods: first Naseredin-Shah period that was the longest one under Qajar dynasty, second Mozafaredin-Shah period and third MohammadAli-Shah period. It seems that pre_constitutionalism is made by articulation of “law” and signifiers such as “reformation”,”justice”,”freedom” and this discourse threatened government’s discourse which was earlier made by articulation of “king” and signifiers like “king’s will”, “security”,”convenience”,” villein”, and “order”. Pictures of this period changed by two ways: king’s portrait becomes more natural and realistic and gradually ordinary people appear on paintings and photography. In second period, constitutionalism established a hegemonic discourse. we can see “king” as a “master signifier” which is moved to the place of articulating of two antagonistic discourses. Some signifiers were added in the opposition discourse like “court of justice” and”parliament”. We can also follow patriotic text in this period. In the pictures we will notice paintings of king’s body which is less important than the Naseredin-Shah period. For example Kamal-ol-Molk who was a famous court painter in that time said”I painted portrait of Mozafaredin-Shah just for one time”. On the other hand, we can see an important change in Mozafaredin-Shah’s photos. Some of these photos show us that king has lost center of the pictures. If we don’t know Mozafaredin-Shah we can’t understand where is the king ‘s portrait in the pictures. Discursive antagonism increased in Mohammad-ali-Shah period. The “king” and “the parliament” are two nodal points which struggle to fix their meanings. We can see two other important signifiers like “independence” and “nation” are added in the opposition’s discourse but government’s discourse is not changed at all. Thus because of that high antagonism which caused two discourses collide together, signs of violence such as gun, dead body and blood appeared on the pictures and postal cards.

The present article attempts to analyze the discourse presented by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, one of the candidates of the tenth presidential election campaign, by using the method of critical discourse analysis. The methodtheory used for extraction of discourse signifiers is Fairclough theorymethod. Then, the signifiers and nodal point are put in the theoretical framework of research means of Laclau & Mouffe's theory-method which represents the total view that would help us to understand the way signifiers articulate together, the way of defining and redefining the signifiers by nodal point, the way of integration around prominent signifier and also to produce antagonistic borders for hegemonic victory to other discourses that exist in the field. The prominent signifier that integrated this discourse and articulated other signifiers around it was popular management.