Paula Biglieri

'The people' is not an undifferentiated mass of individuals

Interview by Giorgos Venizelos

From Populism Newsletter #2, July 2020, pp. 6-9.

Despite the consensus in the field of populist studies that see in populism two core features, people-centrism and anti-elitism, there are obvious disagreements with respect to the phenomenon's genus: is it an ideology? A strategy? A discourse? What do you think these approaches get right and what might they miss in their attempt to define populism?

Instead of asking for the attempts to define populism, I prefer to look into its ontological dimension. To what extent is populism a logic constitutive of the political itself - and not a deviation from it? I pose this question from the perspective of the Essex School of discourse analysis founded by Ernesto Laclau. For instance, in his excellent book Thinking Antagonism: Political Ontology after Laclau, published in 2018, Oliver Marchart - one of the wellknown scholars of the Essex School - developed an answer. He underlined that Laclau's finest argument was precisely that populism is not simply a political expression among others that can be put in the large list of different types of political grouping. Marchart asserts that populism encapsulates political rationality tout court because it directly responds to the 'logic of antagonism', which is the very name of the political itself. 

I follow this thread and consider that populism has to do with the logic of the political itself, but from another angle. I think that politics and populism 'contaminate' each other. If politics is the practice of hegemony and populism is a form of the practice of hegemony, as Laclau said, I conclude that what you have is their mutual contamination. The remarkable aspect is that every populist articulation implies a hegemonic articulation and, as such. it is crossed by the logic of equivalence and the logic of difference. These two logics cannot be coherently united and both are constitutive of politics and populism, that is the reason why they contaminate each other. Once the notion of contamination is introduced the ' possibility to delimit conceptual areas (or to delimit any kind of sphere) as absolutely pure and pristine is excluded. 

Having said this, it is possible to detect specific populist characteristics: the experience of a lack; the inscription of that lack as a demand; the primacy of the logic of equivalence - without erasing the differences among the elements articulated - that gives rise to the subjectivity called 'the people'; the antagonistic dichotomisation of social space into two overdetermined places of enunciation - the people versus the enemies of the people; and the emergence of a leader. Now, it is possible to say that a particular political articulation can be disarticulated, a specific people and its leader can be defeated politically, but if we grasped the idea that populism draws upon those elements that are the very condition of politics, we can understand that populism is ineradicable. In other words, in an ontic sense, and as an articulation linked to a specific form of political expression in a specific context populism can come to an end, but in a fundamental sense ' linked to the very ontology of politics, populism is simply ineliminable. 

Many critics associate populism with nationalism, as well as other phenomena such as xenophobia, demagoguery and authoritarianism. This conflation seems to be rooted in the prominent position that the notions of 'the people', 'the nation' or 'homeland' often assume in populist discourses. But can there be any politics without 'a people' and outside the nation-state? 

As I have said, populism contaminates politics. it is inscribed in politics itself, and thereby also in the people and its leaders. However, we can either have non-populist hegemonic articulations that are established on the basis of a variety of antagonisms in the absence of a decisive leader naming 'a people'; or we can have political formations that privilege the logic of difference and an institutionalised absorption of demands. But we should not lose sight of the fact that there is always the possibility that the multiplicity of antagonisms, at some point, become simplified around two chains of equivalence ('the people' versus 'their enemies') dichotomously dividing the social space The ref ore, politics is always related to the people: either to constructing it through the formation of a chain of equivalence or to prevent its construction through a differentiated absorption of social demands. 

'Populism can be perfectly compatible with a transnational project' 

Another aspect that we often find is that populism is presented as the other face of internationalism. However, this is not necessarily this way. If we look at the Latin American experience and take into account that the idea of 'national and popular' is historically linked to the notion of 'a nation built from below' in opposition to 'the oligarchic nation built from above', we find that national-popular projects never exclude the possibility of constituting internationalist solidarity among oppressed subjects. That is the reason why I think that populism, with its leaders and its peoples. can be perfectly compatible with a transnational project Once populist movements are aware that there is no possibility of successfully emerging from their antagonism with local oligarchies if they don't embrace the international context as their framework for their struggle, there is no impediment for an international openness. 

Discursive dichotomisation through the establishment of an antagonistic frontier between "those on the bottom" and ·those on the top• can slide beyond national boundaries, giving rise to an equivalence between peoples, an international populism. The example of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) during the last populist tide in Latin America is a good case. UNASUR was an alternative international space in the region, and given its importance was therefore one of the first targets attacked and dismantled by the neoliberal governments of Mauricio Macri in Argentina, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Lenin Moreno in Ecuador that followed the populist tide. 

What can psychoanalysis offer to the understanding and analysis of populism? 

As Laclau used to say, when a theoretical inteNention makes a difference, that inteNention is never restricted to its own initial field of formulation. Rather, it produces a readjustment of the whole ontological horizon within which knowledge had moved until then. The contributions of psychoanalysis have not remained restricted within the very field of psychoanalysis, rather, they have reached other fields of knowledge too. This is why psychoanalysis has much to offer to the understanding of politics and, as a consequence. to populism too. 

I think that the most interesting contributions, those which 'have something to say' in politics in one way or another. have tried to think about the effects of the Freudian discovery of the unconscious. For instance, Laclau and Mouffe took this Freudian discovery to arrive at the idea of the existence of another logic which is not controlled by the principle of noncontradiction, that is, the logic of articulation, which is a key concept for the theory of hegemony. They also took the Freudian notion of overdetermination to argue that the social order which corresponds to the symbolic order in the psychoanalytic vocabulary does not have any essential foundational principle And of course, in this sequence we have to add the notion of antagonism. There would not be politics without antagonism. Antagonism is the 'heart' of politics. It is what puts politics to work because it is the traumatic core around which the social is structured. Politics has to do with 'dealing' with antagonism, that is to say, with the 'limit of all objectivity'. It is problematic to deny that antagonism is a constitutive dimension of the social. If we deny this, we are at risk of falling into the authoritarian fantasy that all order can arrive at a completely harmonious arrangement and then function under a pure logic of administration. 

Another main aspect is the affective dimension , which is of course not solely restricted to populism as it is relevant for any political formation. Any political formation is transversed by affect; the social/political bond is a libidinal bond. 

In the specific case of populism, we have to keep in mind how the libidinal bond operates in the collective phenomena However, I want to underline that 'the people' of populism is not the same as the Freudian mass. Populism does not merely imply the formation of 'the people' through the imaginary identification among the members of a mass by putting the same leader in the place of the ideal, because - following Laclau - 'the people' also implies organisation. Populism is not a political articulation composed of merely libidinal ties, but it is also made up of organisations. 'The people' contains unions, political parties, and the most diverse forms of social movements (social clubs, neighbourhood associations, human rights organisations, student centres, groups chaired by village priests, LGBT + and feminist groupings, etc). Therefore, 'the people' cannot be understood as an undifferentiated mass of individuals held together purely by the libidinal tie. 'The people' is never the same as soccer fans, an angry mob, or a sum of individuals who have fallen under the hypnotic influence of a captivating leader. 

'Anti-populists hate the way in which 'the people' enjoy' 

Through the psychoanalytic lens, we can also explore anti-populist phenomena. For instance, by studying anti-populism in Latin America we could decipher how hatred has a structural function. This is actually what I am currently working on with my colleague Gloria Perell6. Lacan's work, and especially what he calls the 'hate of the others being' and specifically the way in which the other enjoys, is very decisive in our study of Latin American anti-populism. Antipopulists hate the way in which 'the people' enjoy. As subjects constituted by 'lack', there is a structural impossibility to have a direct access to jouissance, and that 'lack' is experienced as being the product of 'the Othe(s' subtraction. Then the unbearableness of the enjoyment of 'the Othe( has two aspects: on the one hand, 'the Other has stolen my own jouissance, and on the other hand, 'the Other have access to full enjoyment (thanks to what has been stolen from me). This is exactly what we find in the anti-populist discourse: 'the people' enjoy what they do not deserve, thanks to having access to things that they do not legitimately own. This is what is at the base of the rise of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and the government of Mauricio Macri in Argentina. They display hatred against the advances that the popular sectors achieved under the populist governments of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Dilma Rousseff and Cristina Kirchner. Anyway, this is a long story. 

For a long time, European literature has stressed a supposed incompatibility between populism and power. However, this is no longer true, as populists have assumed positions of power in several European countries during the past decade. If someone turns to the Latin American experience, populist governments have been historically the norm rather than the exception. What does populism in power look like in your region? What are the limits of populism outside and inside the institutions? 

Populisms are not just an anti-status quo impulse that threaten the institutions. Populisms incarnate a counter-hegemonic will and, as such, they attempt to construct new institutions. For instance, Luciana Cadahia and Valeria Coronel have developed excellent work regarding this, through studying the relation between populism and republicanism. The task of any populism is to build a new hegemonic bloc, to institutionalise the changes they attempt to produce We cannot forget that institutions are the product of the crystallisation of the correlation of forces between groups. Consequently, if one wants to institutionalise changes. different institutions have to be created. So, that is what you find when populisms are in power: the attempt to produce new institutions that match the demands that took them to power. 

Regarding the limits of populism, the experience of 12 years of Kirchnerism in Argentina have left, at least, three aspects to be mentioned. 

'Demands are never completely absorbed. They slide. They always remain available for future articulations in different signifying chains' 

First, there is an incessant slipping or sliding of demands. Demands are never completely absorbed. They slide. They always remain available for future articulations in different signifying chains. Once a demand has been met by a populist government, nothing guarantees that this demand will not reactivate with renewed meanings. The consequence is that any populist hegemonic articulation is always open to dispute because there is no hegemonic articulation capable of completely exhausting an element (as it will always be overdetermined). There is always a tension between the populist articulation that is constructed upon a chain of equivalence of demands and the incessant sliding of those same demands. 

This 'tension', for instance, in the case of the last 'populist tide' in Latin America expressed itself in the impossibility of these populisms to absorb the demands generated within their own political contexts; particularly - but not exclusively - those which are not linked to the element of 'equality', that is, their nodal point, the element that structured their own identity. If the crisis of the neoliberal hegemony, at the turn of the century, had left a lot of demands that were later associated to equality, once that many of them were successfully absorbed by the populist governments, new ones emerged which were not linked to that empty signifier and therefore started functioning as a limit. 

Second, there is an ineradicable gap between the moment of the populist rupture and the moment of its institutionalisation. We could say that the second moment attempts to absorb the first one. However. the moment of the populist rupture cannot be completely resolved through a passage to the moment of institutionalisation. In this passage there is always a loss or a remainder. That is to say, the moment of the institution can never exhaustively absorb the constituent moment. In other words. there is a gap between the moment of the promise and the moment of fulfilling it. And the loss or remainder may take the form of discontent, a malaise or even hate. 

This is quite an issue because, on the one hand. the moment of the irruption of populism implies an anti-status quo or anti-institutional impulse that has to deal with a set of sedimented institutions and practices; on the other hand. populisms incarnate, as I just mentioned, a counter-hegemonic will that attempts to create a new set of institutions. That is what 'absorbing the constitutive moment' means. But this task will always fail as it can never avoid the gap and absorb the constitutive rupture without leaving any remainder. 

'Politics is not restricted within the representative institutions alone. It is precisely here that a very important weakness of populism becomes evident' 

Third, the loss of enthusiasm. Populism, once in power, requires to be backed by demonstrations. that is to say, to have 'the people' on the streets, to legitimise the government's actions pursing modifications in the status quo The last Latin American populisms were successful in appealing to popular demonstrations to back the change against the state of things. Massive public expressions supporting the populist governments asserted their political strength and tipped the balance of political forces. As we know, politics is not restricted within the representative institutions alone. It is precisely here that a very important weakness of populism becomes evident. This need of an almost permanent public demonstration sooner or later erodes the potency of popular and mass participation. The satisfaction of demands together with the decaying of the government after years of being in power. which in a way also implies frustrations, provokes a tendency toward demobilisation. The enthusiasm of being part of the 'antagonistic camp', where 'the people' play the main role, tends to decay. The obvious consequence is that populisms find their political capacity to lead a change in the status quo erased and their support weakened. * 

Paula Biglieri. holds a Political and Social Science Ph.D. degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She is a researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Board (CONIC En in Argentina and she is also the head of the Catedra Libre Ernesto Laclau of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the National University of Buenos Aires. Her book Seven Essays on Populism. coauthored with Luciana Cadahia, will be published in the Critical South Series (Polity, 2021)