Constructing a discursive-performative paradigm

The great merit of Populism in Global Perspective, edited by Pierre Ostiguy, Francisco Panizza and Benjamin Moffitt, is the quest to reconcile two critical approaches in populism studies. For over a decade, the discursive strand – drawing on Ernesto Laclau and the so-called Essex School – and the sociocultural or performative strand of populism studies have been fellow travellers. Both oppose the mainstream approaches, which demonise populism as an undemocratic phenomenon. The two critical perspectives understand that populism is much more complex and that in several cases the appeal to “the people” against the “elites” can be democratising, denaturalising hierarchies and giving voice to the voiceless. Despite their proximity, however, these two currents have never unified. In this volume, which integrates theoretical reflections and case studies, one finds a first and important step in the creation of an articulated “discursive-performative” paradigm.

As a whole, the book tries to overcome an old critique of Laclau’s work: his excessive formalism. The contributions of the sociocultural/performative strand, focusing on the performances of populist leaders, would allow for the critical approaches to populism to go “back to the ground”, so to speak. In this sense, the tone of the book is set by Ostiguy and Moffitt’s critique (Chapter 3) of one of the most central and at the same time most puzzling concepts in Laclau’s work: the concept of the empty signifier. Ostiguy and Moffitt join a movement in which even Chantal Mouffe has taken part and considers that Laclau’s naming of this notion would be inadequate. There would be nothing “empty” in the signifier Laclau talks about. Instead, one is dealing with a symbol that is “full of life”, which serves as the nodal point of the processes of political identification, mobilising affects, passions, jouissance. In recent public interventions, Mouffe has preferred to call it a “hegemonic signifier”. For Ostiguy and Moffitt, one should talk about a populist “overflowing signifier”: a rich signifier that manages to appeal to different subjects simultaneously, representing different things to each one.

The other chapters ultimately confirm that populist identification never happens in a vacuum. It will always take place in a historical, social, cultural context. Francisco Panizza and Yannis Stavrakakis (Chapter 2) say that the populist leader is not a top-down heroic entity that constructs a movement ex nihilo. To captivate their audience, the leaders must inscribe themselves in a genealogy of popular movements. Samuele Mazzolini (Chapter 5) reminds one that the populist leader is not just an empty name, but a person of flesh and blood, and that it is on this material that identification processes take place. María Esperanza Casullo (Chapter 4) discusses how the body of the populist leader is a concrete element, full of meaning, that explains their political force. She shows how the populist leaders’ transgressive performances have a mobilizing function, serving as a reference point for the subalternised sectors that they end up “carrying” into politics. Another interesting point raised by Casullo is the criticism of the association between “bad manners” and the virile behaviour of a strongman. Populist transgression can express itself in non-mainstream bodies – of women, indigenous people, minorities, LGBTQIAP+, etc.

If the book invites one to understand the importance of the “flaunting of the low” in the strength of figures like Erdoğan (Chapter 10), Duterte (Chapter 11), and the EFF in South Africa, it also deals with the limits that these practices might face. Joseph Lowndes (Chapter 6) and Laura Grattan (Chapter 7) present the cases of Trump and Bernie Sanders and show how these figures fit into the long history of populist movements in the US. Despite the chasm that separates Trump and Sanders concerning racial minorities, in both cases one sees how the mostly white – or at least “colour-blind” – character of the American populist traditions represents a challenge for these candidates to win over Native American, Black and Latino voters.

The limits of populist experiences in power and the “dirty institutionality” they produce were also analysed in the cases of Rafael Correa in Ecuador (Chapter 4) and SYRIZA in Greece (Chapter 9). As Panizza and Stavrakakis (Chapter 2) argue, populism can be emancipatory if, beyond the idealisation of the figure of the leader, it manages to build horizontal modes of politicisation. What was missing in the Ecuadorian experience, was the construction of these links, a hegemony at the grassroots. What would have happened would have been an inclusion through consumption linked to a charismatic leader, which would not be sustained in the long run.

The book also brings up other discussions. In an insightful contribution that somehow stands apart from the rest of the volume, Benjamin De Cleen, Jason Glynos and Aurelien Mondon (Chapter 8) analyse the impacts of the use of the word “populism” in public debate in Western Europe – notably to normalise the nativist far-right. They also indicate how a populist movement would not only mobilise demands already existing in society but would play a central role in the construction of these demands.

In the profusion of such interesting reflections, two points deserve further debate. The first concerns the concept of the empty signifier. Ostiguy and Moffitt’s critique is thought-provoking and convincing, but it does not reach all the meanings of the idea of the empty signifier in the rich polysemy of Laclau’s work. In particular, the book neglects the resonance between the concept of the empty signifier and the idea of an empty place of power that Claude Lefort spoke of. The differences between Laclau and Lefort, accentuated throughout the volume, actually centre on the fact that for Lefort the emptiness of democracy was structurally given, whereas for Laclau it should be produced “out of the operation of hegemonic logics” (Laclau, 2005, 166). In any case, both in Laclau and in Lefort, the notion of emptiness harks back to the psychoanalytic idea of sublimation, which informed radical democratic theory at various moments (Zicman de Barros, 2022, 229-30). And it is this passionate, radically democratic dimension of emptiness, which instigates the critical spirit of the masses, that disappears in the idea of an overflowing signifier.

The second point of debate in the book would be the tendency of this emerging “discursive-performative” paradigm to reducing the importance of people-centrism – the appeal to “the people” – in populism in favour of leader-centrism. Throughout the book, the figure of the leader emerges as an implicit undisputed component of populism. Even when authors claim that the reaction of the public must be taken into consideration in populism studies, it is always in relation to the leader. This seems to be a limitation inherited from the sociocultural/performative approach. Whereas in his later works Laclau strongly relies on modes of charismatic rule, the discursive strand has allowed one to think of populism beyond these dynamics.

In sum, the volume by Ostiguy, Panizza and Moffitt prompts one to continue the efforts to integrate the discursive and sociocultural/performative approaches to populism. As Laclau would say, the articulation between different perspectives is never frictionless, condemning scholars “to be perpetual bricoleurs” (Laclau, 1996, 44). If the performative strand can bring one “back to the ground”, the discursive current can inspire one to go beyond the bodily performances of charismatic leaders. One way forward to consider here is perhaps the generalisation of the idea of transgression brought forward by the sociocultural/performative approach – a generalization that is latent but not explored in Casullo’s contribution. Populism would not just be about the “flaunting of the low” or the “bad manners” of a leader, but the very transgression that occurs when the discursive construction of “the people” brings marginalised subjects – those Laclau called “subaltern” or “heterogeneous” – out of invisibility.

References

Laclau, E. On Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2005).

Laclau, E. “Negotiating the Paradoxes of Contemporary Politics.” Angelaki 1 (3) (1996). DOI 10.1080/09697259608571895.

Zicman de Barros, T. “Populism: Symptom or Sublimation? Reassessing the Use of Psychoanalytic Metaphors.” Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 27 (2) (2022), 218–34. DOI 10.1057/s41282-022-00282-4.