Ernesto Laclau On Populist Reason (2005)

General ideas

In a previous article, Ernesto Laclau attempts to explain

populism in general, and peronism in particular, criticizing those
normative accounts and their negativation of that concept.
Making use of the idea of popular-democratic interpelations,
he states that class discourses are always articulated with the
available discursive elements; in this sense, the crisis of the
1930s and its reframing by peronist discourse as an outcome of
liberalism

and

elite

class

interests,

would

be

much

appropriated explanation than a inherit authoritarianism for

peronistas distrust of liberal democracy premises.1

Laclau recently retook some points of his theory in the 1970s
with his book On Populist Reason (2005); on this attempt for a
broader theory of populism, Laclau main argument is that
populism simplifies the political space, replacing a complex set
of differences and determinations by a stark dichotomy whose
two poles are necessarily imprecise, although he understands
this logic of simplification as the very condition of political
action2. Hence, populism should be defined not by its ideology,
but by its form, which should be analyzed by social

sciences as a political expression as rational as any other.

For Laclau, populism has been described in terms of
vagueness, imprecision, intellectual poverty, purely transient as
a

phenomenon,

manipulative

in

its

procedures

and

consequently, it would be impossible to characterize it in

positive terms3. This implies in two equally problematic
intellectual attitudes, the restriction of populism to one of its
1 Ernesto Laclau, Towards a Theory of Populism. Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism,
Fascism, Populism (London: NLB, 1977), p. 143-198.
2 Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2005), p. 18.
3 Ibidem, p. 16.

Ernesto Laclau On Populist Reason (2005)

historical variants, or to attempt a general definition, which will
always be too narrow. The first step away from this denigration
of populism would be not the rejection of its vagueness or
imprecision; rather, Laclau questions if the vagueness of
populist discourses is not the consequence of social reality itself
being, in some situations, vague and undetermined? Also,
wouldnt populism be, rather than a clumsy political and
ideological operation, is a performative act endowed with its
own rationality? Lastly, wouldnt populism be a constant
dimension of political action, instead of a transitional moment
constantly related to the immaturity of social actors and
structures? The solution proposed by Laclau necessarily passes
through the assumption that, yes, the populist discourse
simplifies the political space; but this simplification is a
constitutive

part

confinement

to

of
the

any

frontier.

Its

unthinkable,

an

politico-ideological

realm

of

the

operation promoted by the mainstream social sciences

discourse, only happens while we still conceive it as the
simple opposite of political forms dignified with the status
of a full rationality4, a demoting and denigration constructed
over

an

ethical

condemnation

of

the

populist

political

expressions in the continent.

Laclau uses the idea of differential claims, to propose the
possibility of achieving a universal, hegemonic claim. There are
important theoretical contributions that Laclau make in his
pursuit of a conceptualization of populism; the first and very
basic one is that populism is not a is not a type of movement,
but rather a political logic, that develops along social changes,
which

takes

place

through

the

variable

articulation

of

equivalence and difference, and the equivalential moment

4 Ibidem, p. 19.

Ernesto Laclau On Populist Reason (2005)

presupposes the constitution of a global political subject
bringing together a plurality of social demands. This
involves, the construction of internal frontiers and the
5

identification of an institutionalized other

. A second

aspect worthy to be mentioned is the idea that the

plurality of demands did not necessarily imply into
differentiality: there cannot be a priori system unity,
precisely

because

expression
language

of
of

the

unfulfilled

systemic
a

demands

dislocations,

populist

are

leading

discourse/operation

the

every
to

be

imprecise and fluctuating, not because of any cognitive

failure, but because it tries to operate performatively
within

social

reality

which

is
6

heterogeneous and fluctuating

to

large

extent

. A last remark made by

Laclau is that although the logics of difference and

equivalence that we referred to before are ultimately
antagonistic to one another, none the less need one
another;

it

means

that

it

is

precisely

because

particular demand is unfulfilled that with other unfulfilled

demands

solidarity

is

established.

Thus,

if

the

equivalential logic does not dissolve differences but

inscribes them within itself, and if the relative weight of
the two logics largely depends on the autonomy of what is
inscribed vis--vis the hegemony exercised by the surface
of inscription [] any social level or institution can
operate as a surface of equivalential inscription.

The

essential point is that, the equivalential chain necessarily

plays a double role: it makes the emergence of the
particularism of the demands possible breaking with
5 Laclau (2005), p. 117.
6 Ibidem, p. 118.

Ernesto Laclau On Populist Reason (2005)

the status quo but, at the same time, it subordinates
them to itself as a necessary surface of inscription 7
introducing ordering where there was dislocation or

anomie.
For Laclau

the

political

becomes

synonymous

with

populism, in the sense that on his theory of power the

construction of the people is the political act par
excellence as opposed to pure administration within a
stable institutional framework; it means that there is no
political intervention which is not populistic to some

extent.8
*Dussel affirms that through mutual information, dialogue,
translation of proposals, and shared militant praxis, these
movements slowly and progressively constitute bridges for an
analogical hegemon, which includes all demands but might, still
following Laclau, prioritize some. On his analysis, Dussel prefers
the term plebs to refer to people, since he is privileging the
fracture caused by oppression and exclusion, and the people
who is considered in opposition to the elites, oligarchs, the
ruling

classes

of

given

established

political

order.

Remembering the notion of bloc proposed by Gramsci, Dussel

avoids a substantialization, since the term implies an inherent
instability and it allows the contradictions that are typical of a
social bloc, that is, originated from conflict in the material
fields (ecological extinction, economic poverty, the destruction
of cultural identity), disputed in cultural battles within civil
society and then finally reaching the political society, the realm

of institutionalized politics and the State.

The emergence of the people depends on the three variables I
have isolated: equivalential relations hegemonically represented

7 Ibidem, p. 120.
8 Ibidem, p. 154.

Ernesto Laclau On Populist Reason (2005)

through empty signifiers; displacements of the internal frontiers
through the production of floating signifiers; a constitutive
heterogeneity which makes dialectical retrievals impossible and
gives its true centrality to political articulation (156).
Chapter 8 Obstacles and Limits to the Construction of the People

The need to stabilize the revolutionary process became a

leitmotiv of Peronist discourse (214).

Pern as the empty signifier: his word had to operate as a
signifier with only weak links to particular signifieds; the
demand for Perns return to Argentina became an empty
signifier unifying an expanding popular camp. The possibility of
the tendentially empty signifier becomes entirely empty, in
which case the links in the equivalential chain do not need to
cohere with each other at all: the most contradictory contents
can be assembled, as long as the subordination of them all to
the empty signifier remains (Freud and the extreme situation in
which love for the father is the only link between the brothers)

(217) what happened the more we advance into the 1960s.

Once in Argentina, Pern could no longer be an empty signifier:
he was the President of the Republic and, as such, he had to

take decisions and opt between alternatives (220).

Different from what postmodern prophets of the end of politics,
Laclau suggests the arrival at a fully political era, because the
dissolution of the marks of certainty does not give the political
game

any

aprioristic

necessary

terrain

but,

rather,

the

possibility of constantly redefining the terrain itself (222).

Concluding Remarks

The constitutive role of social heterogeneity. Heterogeneity, in

the sense in which I conceive it, has as one of its defining

Ernesto Laclau On Populist Reason (2005)

features a dimenstion of deficient being or failed unicity. If
heterogeneity is, on the one hand, ultimately irreducible to a
deeper homogeneity, it is, on the other, not simply absent but
present as that which is absent. Unicity shows itself through its
very absence (223). We have, however, partial objects that,
through their very partiality embody an ever-receding totality.
The latter requires a contingent social construction, as it does
not result from the positive, ontic nature of the objects
themselves. This is what we have called articulation and
hegemony the starting point for the emergence of the people

(224).
The minimal unit of analysis should not be the group, as a
referent, but the socio-political demand. For him, the unity of
the group is simply the result of an aggregation of social
demands which can, of course, be crystallized in sedimented
social practices. This aggregation presupposes an essential
asymmetry between the community as a whole (the populous)

and the underdog (the plebs) (224).

He explains why the plebs is always a partiality that identifies
itself with the community at large. It is in the contamination of
the universality of the populus by the partiality of the plebs that
the peculiarity of the people as a historical actor lies. The
logic of its construction is what I have called populist
reason (224). A popular demand is one that embodies the
absent fullness of the community through a potentially endless

chain of equivalences.
The partiality of the universal: a partial object, as we have
seen, can also have a non-partitive meaning: not a part of a
whole, but a part that is the whole (225). The particularity in
his theory is NOT merely the apparent field of expressive
mediation; rather, it opposes a non-transparent medium to an

Ernesto Laclau On Populist Reason (2005)

otherwise transparent experience, so that an irreducibly opaque
(non-)representative moment becomes constitutive, whereas
people is not a a kind of superstructural effect of an
underlying infrastructural logic, but a primary terrain the

construction of a political subjectivity.

The logic of hegemony: This moment of fusion between partial
object and totality represents, at one point in time, the ultimate
historical horizon, which cannot be split into its two dimensions,
universal and particular. History cannot be conceived therefore
as an infinite advance towards an ultimate aim. History is rather
a discontinuous succession of hegemonic formations that cannot
be ordered by a script transcending their continent historicity.
Peoples are real social formations, but they resist inscription

into any kind of Hegelian teleology (226).

The relationship between naming and contingency.
The role of affect in the constitution of popular identities.
The passage from one hegemonic formation, or popular

configuration, to another will always involve a radical break.

What is crucial for the emergence of the people as a new
historical actor is that the unification of a plurality of demands
in a new configuration is constitutive and not derivative. In
other words, it constitutes an act in the strict sense, for it does
not have its source in anything external to itself (228). Its

always a transgressive vis--vis the situation preceding it.

The structural and the historical conditions that make the
emergence

and

Structural:

the

expansion

of

multiplication

popular
of

identities

social

possible.

demands,

the

heterogeneity of which can be brought to some form of unity

only through equivalential political articulations. What are the
conditions causing the balance to tip increasingly towards
heterogeneity? Globalized capitalism. Heterogeneity belongs to
the essence of capitalism, the partial stabilizations of which are

Ernesto Laclau On Populist Reason (2005)

hegemonic in nature (we cannot understand capitalism anymore
as a purely economic reality, but as a complex in which
economic,

political,

military,

technological

and

other

determinations entre into the determination of the movement of

the whole) (230). It brings more instability than ever between
concept and name. There is a point in which the name does not
express the unity of a group, but becomes its ground. There is
also the question of the discursive construction of social
division; there has been a multiplication of dislocatory effects
and a proliferation of new antagonisms, which is why the antiglobalization movement has to operate in an entirely new way: it
must advocate the creation of equivalential links between
deeply heterogeneous social demands while, at the same time,

elaborating a common language (231).

The political as contingent articulation: A demand for higher
wages does not derive from the logic of capitalist relations, but
interrupts that logic in terms that are alien to it those of a
discourse concerning justice, for example. So any demand
presupposes a constitutive heterogeneity it is an event that
breaks with the logic of a situation. In the second place,
however, the request for a higher level wage in terms of justice
will be rooted in a wider sense of justice linked to a variety of
other situations. In other words, there are no pure subjects of
change; they are always overdetermined through equivalential
logics. This means that political subjects are always, in one way
or another, popular subjects. And under the conditions of
globalized capitalism, the space of this overdetermination
clearly expands (232).

Ernesto Laclau On Populist Reason (2005)