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Abstract
The concept of an aspirational class came to major prominence in Australia in recent times as a key mainstream demographic around which both major political parties formulated and marketed their policies. Prompted by the electoral success of the conservative Coalition Government in winning key Labor Party heartland seats, the aspirational discourse identified a 'new' class of citizen: practical, hardworking, unsentimentally materialistic, and captive to the prosperity claims of the free-market.
Although arguments for the existence of such a class were not supported by any substantive social research, the reality of the aspirational class was typically uncritically accepted in mainstream political and media commentary. As such the aspirational class was most often invoked as the carrier of an immanent logic in support of the adoption of a range of specific political responses. These included prescriptions for small government, reduced government taxation, privatisation, industrial relations deregulation, and the curtailment of trade union power. The aspirational's status as emerging demographic and class reality meant that such political prescriptions could be objectively conveyed as real world imperatives.
The thesis argues that the aspirational discourse can only be understood in the context of the political interests and discursive logics in relation to which it was articulated. That is, as a neo-liberal mythology that both affirmed and promoted hegemonic values and interests, and responded to the social dislocations attendant to the neo-liberal reform agenda. In this respect the adoption of the aspirational discourse and the key elements articulated within it can be related to important political, social and economic developments in Australia following the commencement of neo-liberal reforms in the early 1980s.
The thesis analyses the rise to prominence of aspirational politics from a discourse theory perspective, employing an approach developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Core theoretical concepts of Laclau and Mouffe, in particular in regard to the function of ideology, the discursive production of social antagonisms, structural dislocation, and the role of mythology, serve to capture the political character of the aspirational discourse and the articulatory practices, discursive logics and social interests implicated in its production