Ensoñaciones populistas: el cuerpo del líder frente al poder de los muchos

Facundo Vega

doi:10.12795/araucaria.2022.i51.05

Autores/as

Facundo Vega Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12795/araucaria.2022.i51.05

Palabras clave:

The Political, Populism, Extraordinary, Ordinary, Exceptionalism, Political Ontology, Political Beginnings, The Many

Resumen

Enfatizando la distinción entre “la política” y “lo político”, Ernesto Laclau corona su examen de los puntos ciegos de la tradición marxista con un elogio del populismo. Su proyecto de recentramiento de “lo político” no postula un comienzo marcado por un gran acontecimiento. Antes bien, Laclau pondera la fundamentación ontológica como el abismo de toda politicidad. Este ensayo evalúa críticamente la conjunción de maniobras deconstruccionistas y democrático-radicales a través de las cuales Laclau inviste el cuerpo del líder populista con un carácter extra-cotidiano. En términos de Laclau, de hecho, la política radical requiere la figura del líder populista que, ontológicamente, señala el camino hacia la emancipación. Sin embargo, se mostrará cómo la suposición de que el cuerpo del líder anima los inicios políticos y los canaliza primordialmente, restringe la anterior “profundización del proyecto materialista” de Laclau y excluye una consideración del papel que “los muchos” juegan en las fundaciones democráticas.

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Ernesto Laclau, “Political Significance of the Concept of Negativity”, in Vestnik, 1 (1988), pp. 73–8 (p. 76). See also Ernesto Laclau, “La politique comme construction de l’impensable” [in Bernard Conein et al. eds.: Matérialités discursives, Lille, Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1981], pp. 65–74; “The Controversy over Materialism” [in Sakari Hänninen and Leena Paldán eds.: Rethinking Marx, Berlin, Argument Verlag, 1984], pp. 39–43; “Ideology and post-marxism”, in Journal of Political Ideologies, 11.2 (June 2006), pp. 103–14 (p. 104); Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, “Post-Marxism without Apologies” [in New Reflections on the Revolution of our Time, London, Verso, 1990], pp. 97–132 (pp. 105–12).

See, among others, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, London, Verso, 2001; Alain Badiou, Peut-on penser la politique?, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1985; Jacques Rancière, La mésentente. Politique et philosophie, Paris, Éditions Galilée, 1995; Étienne Balibar, La crainte des masses. Politique et philosophie avant et après Marx, Paris, Éditions Galilée, 1997.

Laclau, “The Controversy over Materialism”, p. 43. Emphasis in the original. See the important addition to Laclau’s rendition of “materialism” by Frieder Otto Wolf, “Summary of Discussions”, in Rethinking Marx, pp. 52–53.

Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, p. xiv. Emphasis in the original.

Ibid., 193. On antagonism vis-à-vis class struggle, see Ernesto Laclau, “Antagonism, Subjectivity and Politics” [in The Rhetorical Foundations of Society, London: Verso, 2014], pp. 101–125.

Ernesto Laclau, “The Future of Radical Democracy” [in Lars Tønder and Lasse Thomassen eds.: Radical Democracy: Politics between Abundance and Lack, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2005], pp. 256–62 (p. 257).

Laclau and Mouffe, “Post-Marxism without Apologies”, p. 110.

Laclau, “The Future of Radical Democracy”, p. 261.

Neither related to the problem of the external existence of objects, nor to a contraposition of form and matter in which the latter is conceived as the ‘individual existent’, Laclau is more interested in suggesting that ‘a world of fixed forms constituting the ultimate reality of the object (idealism) is challenged by the relational, historical and precarious character of the world of forms (materialism)’. Laclau and Mouffe, “Post-Marxism without Apologies”, p. 110. Emphasis in the original.

See Oliver Marchart, Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2007.

Ernesto Laclau, Emancipation(s), London, Verso, 1996, pp. 60–61. Emphasis added.

See, among others, Ernesto Laclau and Lilian Zac, “Minding the Gap: The Subject of Politics” [in Ernesto Laclau ed.: The Making of Political Identities, London, Verso, 1994], pp. 11–39 (p. 30); “Identity and Hegemony: The Role of Universality in the Constitution of Political Logics” [in Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek eds.: Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, London, Verso, 2000], pp. 44–89 (pp. 58, 71, 84–85); “Glimpsing the Future”, in Laclau. A Critical Reader, pp. 279–328 (pp. 307–11, 323); The Rhetorical Foundations of Society, pp. 112, 115.

Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, p. 61.

Laclau, “Glimpsing the Future”, p. 321.

Laclau, The Rhetorical Foundations of Society, p. 8.

Laclau, The Rhetorical Foundations of Society, p. 121.

Ernesto Laclau, “Politics and the Limits of Modernity” [in Andrew Ross ed.: Universal Abandon? The Politics of Postmodernism, Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1988], pp. 63–82 (p. 81).

Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, p. 200.

Ibid., p. 179. Emphasis in the original.

Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, London, Verso, 2005, p. xi. Emphasis added.

Ernesto Laclau, “Populism: What’s in a Name?” [in Francisco Panizza ed.: Populism and the Mirror of Democracy, London, Verso, 2005], pp. 32–49, (p. 34).

Étienne Balibar, La Proposition de l’Égaliberté, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2010, p. 232; Equaliberty: Political Essays, trans. by James Ingram, Durham, Duke University Press, 2014, pp. 189–90.

Laclau, On Populist Reason, pp. 117, 18.

Ibid., p. 19.

See ibid., pp. 4, 67–68, 71–72, 87–88, 94, 103, 111, 114–16, 127, 132, 160–61, 163, 222, 224–26, 229, 245–46.

Ibid., p. 63. Emphasis in the original and added.

Ibid., 73.

Ibid., pp. 74, 120.

Ibid., p. 82.

Laclau, “Political Significance of the Concept of Negativity”, p. 76.

Laclau, On Populist Reason, p. 100.

Ibid., p. 225. Emphasis in the original.

On “representation” in his work, see, among others, Laclau, “Power and Representation”, in Emancipation(s), pp. 84–104; On Populist Reason, pp. 157–71.

Laclau, On Populist Reason, pp. 160.

Slavoj Žižek, “Against the Populist Temptation”, in Critical Inquiry, 32.3 (Spring 2006), pp. 551–74 (p. 564). Emphasis in the original.

Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies. A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1957.

Laclau, On Populist Reason, p. 170.

To avoid the idealization and aestheticization of “lack”, the phrase “the ordinary” is used in this essay to refer to a realm of action and not to “the many” themselves. At the same time, “the many” indicate that democracy is evasive vis-à-vis the sanctification of the will of “the people”. To put it differently, the appeal to “the many” acknowledges the centrality of political subjectivity without somehow acceding to the idea of “a good people”.

Laclau, “Populism: What’s in a Name?”, p. 40. Emphasis added.

Laclau, “The Future of Radical Democracy”, p. 259. Emphasis added.

See, among others, Laclau, “Why do Empty Signifiers Matter to Politics?”, in Emancipation(s), pp. 36–46; The Rhetorical Foundations of Society.

John Kraniauskas, “Rhetorics of populism”, in Radical Philosophy. A Journal of Socialist and Feminist Philosophy, 186 (July/August 2014), pp. 29–37 (p. 33). On the relation between discourse and materialism in Laclau, see, among others, Rosemary Hennessy, Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse, New York, Routledge, 1993, pp. 59–64; Benjamin Glasson, “Unspeakable Articulations: Steps Towards a Materialist Discourse Theory” [in Johannes Beetz and Veit Schwab eds.: Material Discourse-Materialist Analysis: Approaches in Discourse Studies, Lanham, Lexington Books, 2017, pp. 81–94.

Laclau, On Populist Reason, p. 224. Emphasis in the original.

By embracing Heideggerian “ontological difference”, Laclau avoids a thematization of Heidegger’s derogatory rendition of materialism. See, among others, Martin Heidegger GA 8, pp. 27, 160, 208; GA 9, pp. 268, 340, 365; GA 10, pp. 131, 179–80; GA 15, pp. 352–53, 387–89, GA 16, p. 703; GA 36/37, p. 211; GA 40, p. 50; GA 50, p. 154; GA 65, pp. 54, 148; GA 78, pp. 12–14, 190; GA 79, pp. 88, 94–95; GA 83, 179, 209, 508; GA 89, pp. 461–2, 527; GA 94, pp. 143, 424, 428; GA 95, pp. 40, 129, 149, 360; GA 96, p. 150; GA 97, pp. 28, 127; GA 98, pp. 382, 398–99.

Laclau, The Rhetorical Foundations of Society, p. 1. Emphasis added.

Laclau and Mouffe, “Post-Marxism without Apologies”, p. 112.

Laclau, The Rhetorical Foundations of Society, p. 123. Emphasis in the original.

This result is at odds with Laclau’s previous insistence on moving away from idealist instances, which would consist “in showing the historical, contingent and constructed character of the being of objects; and in showing that this depends on the reinsertion of that being in the ensemble of relational conditions which constitute the life of a society as a whole”. Laclau and Mouffe, “Post-Marxism without Apologies”, p. 111. Emphasis in the original.

That irruption does not necessarily amount to political empowerment. Although the jargon of “the ordinary”, and “the many” can hardly be mobilized to promote the order of rank, the praise of “the common man” has not always constituted a call to emancipation. From the Fronte dell’Uomo Qualunque in Italy to recent populist movements, including the notion that “everyone” is an entrepreneur of his/her/their own life, the “common man” may well be the subject invoked by regressive political currents. See, among others, Judith Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2015, p. 3.

Laclau, Emancipation(s), 82.