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Jos Luis Villacaas Berlanga, Jorge Ledo
CR: The New Centennial Review, Volume 10, Number 2, Fall
2010,pp. 151-182 (Article)
DOI: 10.1353/ncr.2010.0017
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The Liberal Roots of PopulismA Critique of Laclau
J o s L u i s V i l l a c a a s B e r l a n g a
Universidad Complutense, Madrid
T r a n s l a t e d b y J o r g e L e d o
What is Liberalism?, wondered Foucault at the beginning of
The
Birth of Biopolitics. Th e question was urgent. Beginning with
Society Must Be
Defended and Security, Territory, Population, his references to
this issue in his
seminars were constant. My argument will take the same point of
departure,
with the aim of revealing the liberal conditions of populism
and, more con-
cretely, what Laclau calls populist reason.
Although we are not in a position to extract a precise reply
from Fou-
caults texts, we can at least find a good point of departure for
the definition
of liberalism, and this will be my first step. Foucault was
destined to continue
his investigation into the current neoliberalism. And that was
precisely what
he did in Th e Birth of Biopolitics. I will talk about this in
the second part
of my lecture, along with the link between Foucault and Lacan.
Th irdly, I
will develop Laclaus progression from the notion of hegemony to
populist
reason. Fourthly, I will identify Laclaus liberal position in
the very core of his
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T h e L i b e r a l R o o t s o f P o p u l i s m152
populist reason. Finally, I will identify the weak points in
Laclaus arguments,
his faith in rhetoric, and his obsession with the concept of
hegemony.
1 . F o u c a u l t o n L i b e r a l i s m
In Foucault, liberalism introduces the framework of political
rationality
to the state mechanisms based on disciplineright and
biopoliticswhere
biopolitics is understood as a technology of populations
(2008a). Th is func-
tion is very complex since it determines the crucial tasks of
the system,
challenging the aforementioned apparatuses and defining their
own limits.
Th is question, when brought to an adequate level of theoretical
radicalness,
can identify the existing mediation between liberty and
governmental ap-
paratuses. Between a system concerned about respect for legal
subjects and
individual free enterprise (2008, 317), on the one hand, and the
disciplin-
ary and biopolitical apparatuses that consider population en
masse, on the
other, adequate mediations should be established. We can see
that Foucault
addresses the classic problem of the tensions between the
massive and
individualistic dimensions of democratic society. In liberalism,
the former
constitute the framework of political rationality and the latter
concentrate
on the action of government as biopower.
In Foucaults analysis, as in the rest of conventional analyses,
such ten-
sions cannot be completely resolved. For that reason, critique
appears as
the only appropriate practice for liberalism, that is to say,
the continuous
reflection, the aspiration to rationalize the government.
Liberalism requires
the governmentwith all its apparatusesnot to be an end in and of
it-
self. Government cannot become absolute. Th is rationalization
humiliates
the old raison dtat and reduces the central role of police.1 For
liberalism,
Foucault recalls, governments always govern too much. Th e
liberal attitude
imposes even the need to legitimize anything that could be an
aim of the
government. For liberalism, government will no longer have its
own aims
because it is no longer considered a natural institution. Now
Foucault must
respond to the question, Why must one govern? (2008a, 319).
In the summary of his 197879 seminar, Foucault spoke about a
liberal
technology of government, employing Franklins phrase, a
technology of
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J o s L u i s V i l l a c a a s B e r l a n g a 153
frugal government (2008a, 322), as a general expedient to
establish the me-
diation we are talking about. In his opinionforged in the
perception of the
diff erences between the physiocrats and the liberalsthe said
technology re-
quired social regulation.2 He described it in classic fashion,
as participation
of the governed in drawing up the law in a parliamentary system
(2008a, 321).
Th is was the technique that seemed most rational and compatible
with the
governmental economy, or with a rationalization of the
government. Here, a
historical synthesis that was neither necessary nor typical took
place. Liber-
alism has not always been linked to democratic
parliamentarianism, just as
democracy, always endowed with technical and disciplinary
biopolitics, has
not always been linked to liberalism. In fact, liberalism can
drastically limit
its criticism, reducing it to its economic aspects. Th e state
can even eliminate
criticism, as occurs in authoritarian states.
Th e most interesting part of Foucaults descriptionfor it cannot
be said
he is off ering a theoryin his identification of natural
structures as the basis
for the development of liberalism. Logically, he identified
those structures
surrounding the idea of civil society. Even without referring to
Adam Smiths
canonical analysesas he would in Th e Birth of Biopoliticsit was
also clear
for Foucault that the points of departure for liberalism are
those scenarios
of natural freedom. Th ese marked moments unconnected with the
state, but
it is precisely to these moments that the state should accredit
its rationality.
Th us, Foucault considers the market to be a tool by which to
measure gov-
ernmental excesses, and shows that an optimal development in
economy is
incompatible with the maximization of the government.3 In a
certain sense,
natural freedom found one of its expressions in the market, but
was not ex-
hausted in it. It can be said that a completely liberal civil
society is a place of
natural freedom. Civil society maintains a complex relation with
the state: it
is outside and inside at the same time, and it is itself the
basis for mediation.4
It embodies liberty, but it is in need of rational
government.
Foucault made explicit the decisive and paradoxical argument for
this
issue. Since it seems clear that natural freedom should be as
such (free)
because of its capacity to self-govern, Foucault cleverly
observed that this
order does not arise from a political society founded on a
contractual bond
(2008a, 321). On the contrary, there was already a need for
government in
-
T h e L i b e r a l R o o t s o f P o p u l i s m154
the natural order. Adam Smith would have focused his argument by
saying
that the results of natural freedom have to be regular to
guarantee their own
perpetuation. Long before Marx, the Scottish philosopher found a
contra-
diction in the economic system. Th us, the need of the
government had to
do with the regulation of natural liberty itself and aspired to
maintain it in
that naturalness. For instance, this was the purpose of
antimonopoly laws,
one of the inevitable and unacceptable results of liberty. Th
us, government
guarantees natural liberty: its ethical-legal regulation of the
market tries
to guarantee the equality of opportunities, free competition,
the liberty of
pricesthat is, the natural free market. Only by the
ethical-legal regulation
of the government, then, does natural freedom regulate itself.
Th e adequate
relation between the state and civil society is configured
inside and out
through synthesis of natural and political regulation, of legal
positivism and
iusnaturalism. Foucault is familiar with this phenomenon and he
describes
it adequately, although without quoting Smiths category of
natural freedom.5
Th e notion of regulation is here the decisive one. As such, it
reproduces
the paradox of an intervention that opens to the possibility for
things to run
under the guidance of their nature. Th ere will be regulation
for that which
can maintain its natural attributes through regulation. Th at is
the reason
liberal government neither consists in discipliningits aims are
not to forbid
or to order (2000b, 47)nor in imagining the negative. Rather, it
is linked
to security apparatuses, although Foucault did not clarify this
point.6 He
defended these positions in his previous seminarSecurity,
Territory, Popu-
lationwhere we find this powerful passage: Th e game of
liberalismnot
interfering, allowing free movement, letting things follow their
course; lais-
ser faire, passer et allerbasically and fundamentally means
acting so that
reality develops, goes its way, and follows its own course
according to the
laws, principles, and mechanisms of reality itself (2008b, 48).
Some ethical-
political laws are proper and adequate to natural reality. Th is
is the paradox
and it can only be reduced because, in both society and
government, we
speak about laws of freedom. Regulation is justified only if it
off ers securities
to preserve freedom naturally as it is. Th e security mechanisms
only make
sense through the link they establish with freedom, as its
framework and
playground.7
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J o s L u i s V i l l a c a a s B e r l a n g a 155
From all this we can draw a conclusion: freedom is integrated
into the
core of the technologies of power. Liberal government is the
aftermath of this
mutation. In this new technique, government must think about the
nature
of things, and the nature of things in this context is nothing
other than the
liberty of human beings. Liberal government technique takes into
account
what [people] want to do, what are they interested in doing,
what they think
about doing (Foucault 2008b, 49). Th e being-together of human
beings has
a specific naturalness of the relations of the men among
themselves, that
has to do with living together, working together, and producing
together.
Only at the end of Security, Territory, Population does Foucault
arrive upon
the naturalness of society and tackle the notion of regulation
(343). Finally, in
Th e Birth of Biopolitics, liberalism finds its basis in a
naturalism, and it is only
at this point that he is dealing with human nature (2008a, 61).
Th ese natural
relations, if they are to be respected by the government, must
translate into
scientific knowledge.8 Liberal government and the knowledge of
the nature
of things, as they refer to the coexistence of human beings, are
thus inex-
tricable. So we have a scientific knowledge indispensable to
government,
concludes Foucault, that also characterizes liberal government
as a specific
correlation between power and knowledge now identified as
government
and science. Government must mold its decisions from science. Th
is would
be its procedure of rationalization.
2 . N e o - L i b e r a l i s m a n d t h e
l i n k w i t h L a c a n
Th e topic laid out by Foucault in these seminars aimed at
presenting the
problem of the relations between truth and subject in the core
of liberalism
understood as an art of government.9 Th e seminars that followed
should
have dealt with the problem, but what we read in Th e
Hermeneutics of the
Subject is disappointing: all we find is that liberalism is not
the right attitude
with which to approach the teckn tou biou (art of living) of the
ancients
(2005, 48587). With regard to contemporary liberalism, his best
approach is
found in Th e Birth of Biopolitics, and even it is not very
substantial. Th ere, he
clarified that liberalism was an art of governing according to
the rationality
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T h e L i b e r a l R o o t s o f P o p u l i s m156
of economic agents and, more generally, according to the
rationality of the
governed themselves (2008a, 313). From the point of view of
liberalism, he
clearly suggested that the issue of the relations between truth
and subject
was to be found in the market. Here the revelation of what is
right in gov-
ernmental sense, as lieu de vridiction (place of verification),
took place.10
Th erefore, it is the market where we find the key for the
verification or for
the falsification of the governmental practice. Th e practice
based on this
assumption has a nature similar to that of scientific
praxis.
To accomplish that mission, some type of relation among truth,
reason,
and freedom of the governed had to be established. Th e
expression and rev-
elation of that relation was permeated by the market. Foucault
proposed
utility as a center for the synthesis of these elements. From
the point of view
of the population that finds its rhetoric in the idea of
utility, Foucault talked
about a rpublique phnomnale des intrts (the phenomenal republic
of
interests, 2008a, 46). Th is governmental needed freedom, as
only through
it does the subject find its truth, define its interest, and
calculate its utility
in the market. Th erefore, to consume in the market one must
first consume
freedom, and to do this, freedom has to be produced and
organized (2008a,
65), the phenomena that tend to destroy it must be regulated,
and its circula-
tion within a space must be assured. We have, away from any kind
of uni-
lateralism, the market looking after the state and the state
looking after the
market (Zanini 2006, 136). Th e institution of a panopticon is
thus unfeasible.
Th e set of problems raised by the human natural order as a
fundamental
premise of neoliberalism is enormous. It is odd that the seminar
on Th e Birth
of Biopolitics does not tackle them. Th e course was devoted to
demonstrating
that the crisis of liberalism, and the collapse of its
confidence in the rational-
ity of the governed, led to Nazism and the fascist state,11 to
which neoliberal-
ism off ered an alternative solution. Foucaults annotations on
neoliberalism
are quite scattered but important. Th e key question lays in the
fact that, if the
market is the place for truth, then it should not be understood
as a place for
trading, but rather as a place for competition. Th e action of
the government
is related to this question, and it should recreate it
continuously. Th is is es-
sentially the transformation of neoliberalism (2008a, 14546). Th
erefore, the
government does not intervene in the market, but rather in
society itself and
-
J o s L u i s V i l l a c a a s B e r l a n g a 157
in the social environment. Th ere, liberty should be produced
and human na-
ture should be approached. And it must be done not only by
assuring market
homogeneity and its equivalence, but its heterogeneity, diff
erentiation, and
multiplicity as well. Th e human being considered by
neoliberalism is not the
one that makes demands of the marketas if he had a core of fixed
needs
but the one that produces diff erence by means of his own
enterprise. Th e
homo conomicus is not lhomme de lchange, but lhomme de
lenterprise.
Th is is the true power of society, and it is for this reason
that society needs
to assume, to consume, and to renew freedom. Th is homo
conomicus is
the interface of government and the free individual (253). Th e
neoliberal
government technique procures diff erentiation, inequality, and
competi-
tion. Th erefore, the sovereign loses his function: he cannot
control the set of
phenomena that, from freedom, promotes enterprise (173).12
I am not interested in the need for continuous arbitration on
liberty and
competition; Foucault himself wrote many pages on this question.
More im-
portant is the transformation of labor into human capital, of
the worker into
an enterprise in and of herself. I cannot unfold this argument
either. Th ere is
no doubt about the prominence of these problems and their
conformation
of the rhetoric of the present (Foucault 2008a, 22225).
Otherwise, I can only
point out Foucaults flirtation with the Th eory of Systems, that
is, with the
intervention of the government in the environment or scenario of
the
economic system as a social system of freedom. Th e decisive
aspect is that
the intervention in this environment should produce a continuous
diff er-
entiation, a systematic modification (270), and a perpetual
displacement of
equivalences, since the notion of competition between
enterprises can only
find its place there. Foucault did not investigate what upholds
this continu-
ous displacement of freedom, nor this productivity of diff
erences that renders
the market more plural and incapable of establishing
equivalences, more
uneven and therefore more competitive. Th us, inequality is the
condition for
competition. Th e play resides in the necessity of providing
heterogeneity that
can be continuously reduced to equivalencethe game of
multiculturalism.
Foucault suggested that the crucial test for all of this is to
be found in
economic growth, and that this is the only test that can deal
with the rhetoric
that transforms the worker into a businessman who capitalizes
himself.13 But
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T h e L i b e r a l R o o t s o f P o p u l i s m158
this final process has to do with the definition of a market
completely mobi-
lized by competition, and this definition is related to the
ability to regenerate
economic freedom continuously and to introduce new
heterogeneities. Fou-
cault does not go beyond these questions. Adelino Zanini, who
has studied
Th e Birth of Biopolitics in depth, said that with this
problematic question we
meet with an abrupt end. Moreover, he said that this seminar
sembra a tratti
sfuggire dalle mani del suo autore (seems to occasionally slip
out from the
hands of his author) (2006, 147, 145).14 If the premise was that
neoliberalism
was a naturalism, an assumption about human nature that knows
its own
truth in the market via its conversion into enterprise, Foucault
did not want
to develop this idea. As we know, he took refuge in the
aesthetic elitism of
the artist in and of himself, so alien to democratic
society.
I believe this is just one of two problems, and that both of
them under-
score the extent of Foucaults voluntary disassociation from
theory. At one
point in Th e Hermeneutics of the Subject, somebody in the
audience raises a
hand and asks: Can we not see some genuinely Lacanian concepts
coming
up, as operators [oprateurs] in what you are saying? (2005,
187). Foucault
demands some additional explanation, clearly puzzled by the
question, to
affirm eventually that he is working out the relationships
between the sub-
ject and truth. Th e questioner confirms that this is exactly
what he is talking
about. Here we can see Foucault doubtful, on the defensive. He
concludes by
maintaining that, on the topic of the subject and truth, I see
only Heidegger
and Lacan. Personally, myself, you must have heard this, I have
tried to reflect
all this from the side of Heidegger and starting from Heidegger.
Th ere you
are. However, certainly you cannot avoid Lacan when you pose
these kinds
of questions (189).
It was certainly a bad moment. Th e daring questioner had
suggested the
possibility that Foucault employed theoretical concepts.
Foucault, smirking,
confirmed that what he did was Heideggerian philology, and if he
had some-
thing to say about the truth of the subject, it would have to be
drawn from
a new beginning. As Heidegger went to the physis of the
pre-Socratics, so
Foucault went to the Alcibiades, an apocryphal Platonic
dialogue. Of course,
he recognized that the topic was linked to Lacan, but he did not
take the next
step. In the end, he got rid of the situation with a pet phrase
we all know: Any
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J o s L u i s V i l l a c a a s B e r l a n g a 159
other questions? (2005, 189). Actually, nobody got anything
beyond what
he had said at the beginning of the seminar: Lacans analyses are
powerful
insofar they renew the question of the relationships between the
subject
and the truth (30). In that case, it would have been necessary
to address the
question of what happened to the market as a place of
verification. A similar
situation to that found in Th e Birth of Biopolitics reappeared
now as a refusal
to confront Lacan.
3 . L a c l a u s M e l a n c h o l i c P o s i t i o n
I should recognize that the work of Laclau has not been
discussed in Spain
as much as it deserves, even if it was translated some time ago.
Nobody will
deny that his central work is Hegemony and Socialist Strategy,
presented as
an introduction to radical democratic politics. In this book,
the dominant
presence is not Lacan, nor Foucault, but rather Gramsci.
Actually, Lacan ap-
pears in an endnotemuch more focused on Miller, by the wayin a
passage
that stresses the importance of the nodal point (point de
capiton),15 and in the
Spanish introduction of 1987, where he quotes Lacan, along with
Heidegger
and Derrida, precisely to underscore the connection between
language and
the social world (Laclau and Mouff e 2001, 21). Th ere, Laclau
employs terms
similar to those of Foucault at the moment of being questioned,
and mani-
fests his interest about the problem of the subject. Assuming
criticism on
every kind of essentialism about the subject, either Man or
Class, Laclau
mediates in the crisis of Marxism, eff ecting a review inspired
by Gramsci
that affirmed the importance of the concept of hegemony. Th is
concept was
separated from every necessary law of history; it affirmed the
contingency
and the autonomy of the political, was centered on a naked
historicity, and
encouraged play in the field of concrete factuality. In short,
hegemony could
be articulated in the historical present by means of an adequate
administra-
tion of social antagonisms, of force fields. Th e political
subject abandoned its
essentiality to the occupation of the space only by objects that
can be con-
structed. In this seminal book, Laclau explains that this can
only be carried
out via a radicalization of democracy, destined to articulate
the struggles
against subordination, arbitrary domination, and illegitimate
power (xv).
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T h e L i b e r a l R o o t s o f P o p u l i s m160
In 1985, Laclau and Mouff e found themselves continuing in two
tradi-
tions: the Enlightenment and the modern democratic revolution.
They
mainly spoke to the countries on the periphery of capitalism,
where the
popular and collective identities can arise from the fringes of
class. Neverthe-
less, this fight must recognize the end of the Jacobin and
Leninist imaginary,
the political-conceptual world that arises from the Sattelzeit
of Reinhart
Koselleck: the universal subjects, the history as singular, the
civil society like
homogeneous structure (Laclau and Mouff e 2001, 2), or the
autonomous
logic of the productive forces. Th e concept of hegemony was not
presented
as the political complement of a deep objective logicthe
equivalent of
what ideology was to bourgeoisieor a political supplement
derived from
the forms of concurrence through productive objectivity which is
imposed
against all-too-human resistances.
On the contrary, hegemony implied the existence of a logic
proper to
the social. For Laclau this logic harbored a center of
contingency that must
be deciphered. Hegemony did not aim to produce the sense of
truth in a
society, but rather to carry out or decide it. If this notion
was labeled as
Marxist, it was simply because Marxism constitutes our own past
(Laclau
and Mouff e 2001, 4). Th us, it was a post-Marxist confession.
Actually, Gramsci
and Foucault were in agreement in their defense of contingency,
reversibility,
the war of positions, and their interest in relations of power
mediated only
by the logic of subjectivity.
But this was not merely a matter of post-Marxism. Laclaus
analysis was
rooted in a certain melancholic confession that can be found in
a central
chapter of Hegemony titled Beyond the Positivity of the Social:
Antagonisms
and Hegemony. I will show that the paradoxes in this passage
reveal Laclaus
avoidance of the ramifications of Foucaults eff orts to define
neoliberalism. In
this sense, his analysis failed to disengage from a point of
departure that is in-
ternal to the liberal regime model. I am talking about a liberal
presupposition
in Laclau insofar as he does not support a theory of neoliberal
government,
but shares assumptions with the situation that institutes
liberal government.
Th us, Laclau talks about global capitalism as if it were still
being governed in
the first steps of liberal government, without identifying
neoliberalism as a
specific form of government. To consider neoliberalism seriously
in 1987 was
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J o s L u i s V i l l a c a a s B e r l a n g a 161
impossible, mainly because Foucaults papers had not yet been
published. As
we will see, this fact resulted in a limited use of Foucault and
consequently a
still more limited use of Lacan. In any case, Laclau worked with
the tools he
had prior to Th e Birth of Biopolitics, and this explains why
his analysis gives
the impression of being old fashioned.
Th e decisive fact in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy was that,
in the ad-
vanced capitalist countries, there was an important scissors eff
ect: the more
democracy they had, the less unity around a popular pole (2001,
133). Global
capitalism, Laclau asserted in the final comments to On Populist
Reason, rep-
resents a qualitatively new moment in the history of capitalism,
because it
becomes more difficult to determine the force against which we
are fighting
(2005, 9899). Th e complex categorial displacement led by Laclau
unveils its
final mechanism: in democratic society the friend/enemy
distinction, the
dualism, the frontier eff ects, cease thus to be grounded upon
an evident
and given separation, in a referential framework acquired once
and for all
(Laclau and Mouff e 2001, 134). Th us the present comes to be
characterized by
a democratic subject position, and Laclau was melancholiac about
a popular
subject position. Th e latter is constituted from the division
of the political
arena in a friend/enemy antagonism. Th e former does not divide
society in
dualisms. In essence, both possibilities come from the social
structure itself,
and both are based in the liberal diff erentiation between civil
society and
political society. Perhaps the more important theoretical
affirmation is the
following onean assertion, by the way, related to Foucault: if
society is
never transparent to itself because it is unable to constitute
itself as an objec-
tive field, neither is antagonism entirely transparent, as it
does not manage
totally to dissolve the objectivity of the social (Laclau and
Mouff e 2001, 129).
In reality, Foucault knew that this was the case as he knew it
was the key to
contemporary government: neoliberalism permits neither a
sovereign nor a
dualistic antagonism, but rather circulations of competition
that emanate
from the civil society and that demand plural arbitration.
Laclau accepts the
liberal premise, and his aspiration is to transform competition,
the antago-
nism dislocated and in continual proliferation, into a visible
and dualistic
antagonism.
His theory is complex and, to my knowledge, it is
constitutedin
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T h e L i b e r a l R o o t s o f P o p u l i s m162
Hegemony and Socialist Strategyby the following elements: Th e
point of
departure in every kind of politics is to be found in civil
society.16 Th is civil
society is unavoidably permeated by proliferating diff erences.
Any of these
diff erences can create antagonisms if their rights are
denied.17 Nevertheless,
the specificity of neoliberal government consists in the
impossibility of le-
gitimately denying any free demand. Laclau asserts, as Foucault
could have
asserted, that the outside of civil society and its diff erences
consists in a
relation with political power as intelligible and instituted
forms of a soci-
ety. Th ese forms rationalize their own power, as we have seen
in Foucault,
inasmuch as they recognize that these diff erences are expressed
as liberties
that must be guaranteed.
But Laclau has diff erent scenarios in mind. When he cites
Disraeli and
his program to make one city from the two cities, he is
expressing a regula-
tory idea from which the classical liberal government arises.
Its logic con-
sists in avoiding diff erence as much as possible, in producing
homogeneity
and equivalences, whose truth is expressed in the national
market. Laclau
describes this far-reaching processa liberal government
strengthener, in
Foucaultian termsas the disruption of the liberal pole and the
absorp-
tion of particular free demands into positivities recognized as
rational and
manageable.18 Th e melancholic moment consists in accepting as
given both
that a popular pole exists and that civil society is the social
origin. Th e ra-
tionalization of liberal government would imply identification
and isolation
of demands, attending to them in their specificity, dismantling
them from a
conception of the worldwhat Laclau calls a system of
equivalencesand
a neutralizing of the possibility of the dualistic and native
antagonism. Th is
use of civil society as origin and, at the same time, assertion
of the mel-
ancholic position of people can only generate a singular
movement: the
way for civil society to become people again is to see how the
premise of
liberalism fails in its pretension of homogeneity and produces
its opposite,
the people.
Actually, Laclau does not show a clear path for liberal civil
society to
become people again. At least one thing is clear: this movement
implies
considering the notion of civil society as ductile. Laclaus
rejection of so-
ciology is, in this case, a good alibi. Perhaps this is the
reason why he feels
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J o s L u i s V i l l a c a a s B e r l a n g a 163
comfortable talking about societies of limited modernitylike
Hispanic
societieswhere the liberal form of civil society has not taken
root. In any
case, the civil society that allows liberal government to exist
is that which ar-
ticulates the clearly defined system of diff erences that Weber
called spheres
of social action and Luhman social systems. Th e actions of
freedom are not
free from the beginning, but ordered and diff erentiated at the
core of those
systems. Th ey are scientific, economic, religious, erotic,
ethical, aesthetic,
moral demands, among many others. Laclau admits, the more
unstable the
social relations, the less successful will be any definite
system of diff erences
and the more the points of antagonism will proliferate (Laclau
and Mouff e
2001, 131). Th at is true. But perhaps Laclau does not measure
the efficacy
that the diff erentiation between the spheres of social action
produces for a
liberal government; this efficacy impedes exactly what he
demands: a logic
of equivalences that allows a unification of all the demands in
a common
denominator and, thus, founds a duality. Laclau also does not
measure the
diff erences introduced by the neoliberal phase in the old
liberal government,
and subsequently, we find a diff erent way to understand these
spheres of
social actionnot as zones of demand, but as zones of
enterprise.
At its core, Laclaus melancholy finds its origin in the works of
Jacques
Rancire, emerging from his studies on nineteen-century France.
Undoubt-
edly, it is in this period that Laclaus categories find their
historical parallel.
If Laclau had used Foucault and his notion of liberal
government, he would
perhaps have been freed of his tendency toward melancholy. If he
had used
Foucaults ideas on neoliberalism, then he would have had to
renounce this
facet of this work. In any case, his ideas concerning the
reversibility of the his-
torical process are perhaps too sweeping. Laclaus perennial
problem is how
a civil society can bring about a new people as a political
subject capable of
making the friend/enemy distinction and put a new logic of
hegemony into
circulation. Just like the nineteenth century, but in the
twenty-first.
Here, the argument of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy was rather
rudi-
mentary and circular. What hindered the absorption of free
demands was
their inclusion outside the systems of social diff erentiation.
To achieve this,
and to avoid a diff erentiating political framework, demands had
to be pre-
sented not alone, but rather as a part of a logic of
equivalences where they
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T h e L i b e r a l R o o t s o f P o p u l i s m164
would be included and addressed. Th us the variety of demands
that is,
positivity would not be presented as various and individual, but
rather
as organically integrated, as a complete and alternative set
that cannot be
analyzed or rationalized by the framework of power. In Hegemony
and Social-
ist Strategy, Laclau states that this is the only way to create
an antagonistic
situation, but at the same time, circularly, he defends the
notion that only
negativity in the moment of addressing the demandto transform
the
unaddressed demand from a partial entity to a symptom of a more
radical
lackcan create that equivalence in the basis of antagonism and
the friend/
enemy diff erence.19
Th e only way to break this circle would be to maintain that
antagonism
can be already found in society. Th is was evident for Disraeli,
and it is the
point of departure for liberal government as well. Laclau stated
clearly in
2001 what he meant in 1987: we must suppose that antagonism is
already
present in the society because oppressive forces have created
it.20 Th at is
to say, current society functions like a threshold that opens to
the age that
gives birth to liberal government. When we employ Foucaults
analytical
materials, we cannot sustain this x-ray of the relation between
the social
and the political. As Laclau states, that which constitutes the
antagonism
is a set of negated diff erences considered as equivalents, not
the diff erences
themselves. Th e oppressive forces that he presupposes are no
longer the
forms adopted by the liberal technique of government, nor by the
neoliberal
techniques. Lets accept that the liberal government strategy
consists of at-
tending to the demand in a state of diff erence; that is to say,
as a secondary
struggle. If we are right, by no means is it possible to discern
the oppressive
forces. Affirming them constitutes a circle in Laclau: there
exists a certain
required delimited interiority.21 If this is the case, then the
diff erences be-
tween the unaddressed demands will be negated, a symptomatic
equivalence
between those negations will arise, along with a concentrated
antagonism
and the friend/enemy distinction. Th e fractured social space
will produce a
coincidence with the political space, a hegemony will arise, and
with it the
new political subject, a people.
This is just what liberal government avoids by mediating
demands
through the institution of diff erent spheres of actionwhich
concretizes the
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J o s L u i s V i l l a c a a s B e r l a n g a 165
nature of things and human social actionand thus off ers them,
analyzed,
to a rational government. In contrast to this, if we suppose the
existence of
a delimited interiority, we already assume that there exists a
broken civil
society, inefficient systems of diff erentiation, and a possible
friend/enemy
diff erentiation.22 If this diff erence arises, it is because it
is placed in the base.
It is a circle. If our point of departure is an ontology of the
social that encloses
reppresive forces, or an excluding interiority, then antagonism
is served,
and politics, considered as an hegemony that works to achieve
its position
by destroying the enemy, is always possible. But this social
ontology is not
accredited in a proper analysis of liberal or neoliberal
societies. Th e obstacles
to freedom are connatural with civil society, and they make the
conflict
unavoidable. But this is neither an antagonism nor a
friend/enemy distinc-
tion (Laclau and Mouff e 2001, 181). On the contrary,
neoliberalism centers
on juridical regulation according to a market based on the
enterpreneurial
production of equivalences that necessarily integrate
demandsbecause
they are anticipatedand thus the negative equivalence of their
refusal
is diluted. Neoliberalism, as we have seen, is devoted to the
regulation of
the market, understood as free competition of enterprises and
diff erences,
of heterogeneities supported by the proliferation of the sense
of freedom,
which produces as supply and yet is received as demand. Laclaus
prevision,
a concentration of the conflict in the antagonism, does not seem
to happen.
Following Laclaus presuppositions, his trajectory toward a
populist logic
can be easily understood. His argument fundamentally consists in
affirming
that the more global capitalism resists the presence of that
concentrated
antagonism, the more functional populist reason becomes (2005,
231), be-
cause it takes the nature of things, human nature, and the true
structure
of liberty into account. In advanced capitalism, the production
of dualistic
eff ects, border eff ects, and the friend/enemy distinction
constitutes the main
political problem. It was thus in Hegemony and Social Strategy.
What in the
past seemed to be a natural processpolitical dualizationnow must
be
governed and produced in the face of neoliberal regulation.
Populist reason,
in opposition to Foucault, would be the form of government that
would
regulate the intended nature of the res politica, the production
of the friend/
enemy dichotomy. Th is implies that the very identities which
will have to
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T h e L i b e r a l R o o t s o f P o p u l i s m166
confront one another antagonistically (Laclau and Mouff e 2001,
134) must
be constituted.
Undoubtedly, this suggests the true problem, which Foucault did
not
wish to undertake: the hegemonic link transforms the identity of
hegemonic
subjects (Laclau and Mouff e 2001, xii) by its influence on the
psyches of the
political agents. Th e hegemonic link implies a transformation
of the notion of
liberty, a hermeneutic of the subject that abandons that other
hermeneutic
that off ers its evidence to neoliberal government, that demands
a new truth.
However, in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy these constitutive
processesof
both the collective and individual subjectsdid not become
visible. Perhaps
this explains why in the prologue of the 2001 edition, Laclau
reminds us that
the visibility of the acts of originary institutionin their
specific contin-
gencyis, in this respect, the requirement of any hegemonic
formation (xii).
To make visible the originary institution of the subjectivity of
the historical
actors was the political agenda. In Hegemony everything was
subordinated
to the identification of the enemy, who operated as an excluding
represen-
tative that rejected demands and established equivalences among
them.
Th e enemy negatively propelled the formation of the people. Th
e priority
of negativity was the premise in his analysis. But if global
capitalism and
neoliberal government had to be taken seriously, then such a
thing could not
be assumed. Populist reason would have to tackle things ab
integro.
4 . A L i b e r a l P r e m i s e f o r P o p u l i s t R e a s
o n
In Hegemony and Social Strategy, Laclau and Mouff e appealed to
Foucault
and Lacan, but in a faulty way. Nevertheless, Lacans
contribution as re-
viewed by iek was decisive for On Populist Reason. In spite of
this, in this
book, Laclau could still not avoid the logic of equivalence of
demands, a sort
of market of unaddressed demands, a political countermarket that
could
call into question the market of liberal government. In
principle, the argu-
ment was similar. As Laclau himself recognized in his polemic
with iek, his
entire analysis started from the concept of demand.23 In Laclaus
words: Th e
smallest unit from which we will start corresponds to the
category of social
demand (2005, 73). Th e liberal basis of his approach is
obvious. For Laclau
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J o s L u i s V i l l a c a a s B e r l a n g a 167
the political subject is above all a liberal subject and, to a
certain extent, is
seen as a consumer of certain goods. When Laclau has to justify
why social
actions are demands, he withdraws into liberalist certainties
about human
nature: the subject is always the subject of lack (2006, 655).
Similarly to
Lacan, this lack always encourages the need for a new desire,
because it is
based on the disproportion between the fullness of the community
and the
particularism of a place of enunciation: in Lacans words, on the
dispropor-
tion between the enunciated desire and the unconscious as social
language
and as the desire of the other.
Th us, Laclau, in what I consider an intelligent gesture, shows
the an-
thropological base of the liberal regime through Lacan, and
explains why
demands are continuously renewed, why they never end, why the
human
being is permeated by a political economy of desire that cannot
be closed. In
eff ect, as with the modern Hobbesian subject, that which
provides meaning
to desire is its infinite dimension, tending toward a totality
that can never
be reached. Th is infinite desire unveils something impossible
to obtain, an
irreparable loss, an emptiness that cannot be filled by any
desire. In this way,
the libido appears as the key category explaining the nature of
the social
bond (Laclau 2005, 53). Demand, destined only partially to fill
the gap be-
tween lack and desire, receives its meaning from the whole
society, from the
unconscious, from the language, and naturally, from the others,
and here
finds its link with human beings. What we have here is a version
of the nature
of things that is the point of departure for liberalism, now
illuminated by
the Freudian and Lacanian analysis. Th e thesis is that
individual psychol-
ogy is simultaneously social psychology,24 something that Weber
already
understood to be the key to liberalismmarginal utility as key to
the market.
Demands proceed from identifications as ways of expressing aff
ective bonds
to others, whose desire is now our desire. Th ey configure
spaces of emotional
mimesis that we use to fill the distances between the
unconscious and soci-
ety as a whole. Th erefore, demands cannot be either completely
addressed or
completely filled. Laclau was not blocked where Foucault
was.
But Laclau does not seem to assume the approach of Lacanwho
shows
the anthropological roots of capitalismin an adequate form. From
my
point of view, this is the situation: Demand has as its premise
the linguistic
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T h e L i b e r a l R o o t s o f P o p u l i s m168
activation of desire from the unconscious, the identification of
a desire
through the desire of others (supply). Given its finite
character, it presents
the impossibility of exhausting the unconscious or the whole
social, a con-
quest of the infinite object that would be able to fill the
constitutive lack.
Demand cannot build a stable psychical order; only repetition,
variation,
and discursiveness can achieve this. Libertys claim pertains to
this. Every-
thing comes from the interpretation of the desire of others and
from the
linguistic strategies to express it. All that has been said
about the market and
business has to do with the interpretation of the desire of
others. When we
interpret the desire of otherswhen we activate our aff ectionwe
present
products that fill the demands of others, that are at the same
time founded
in their interpretation of the desire of others. Th e
interpretation of the de-
sire from within the social core is the originary. Th e aff
ective supply proper
to entrepreneurial labor precedes the demand. Here would be the
point of
departure for understanding the game of neoliberalism: implying
a trans-
formation of labor at the moment it discovers its own aff ective
character
and understanding economic success as an enterprise that
produces objects
capable of fulfilling drives. Th at is the reason why work has
transformed the
notion of merchandise: it has passed from being the inert object
conceived
by Marx to being the material support of supply that addresses
drives. Here,
power merely regulates the environment to make heterogeneities
appear,
besides all the hermeneutical statements of the subject, and
maintains the
dynamism of the symbolic loaded with aff ective elements acting
as new
supply to satisfy drives capable of generating demand, which
expands by
way of the market.
Liberalism serves as Laclaus point of departure because it
allows him to
speak in terms of demand, the nature of things, and
emotional-social bonds,
but he does not want to accept the existing play between civil
society and
neoliberal power. He does not want to assume neoliberalism just
to ignore
what he is confronting. He accepts liberalism because otherwise
his analysis
would not find its ground, but he does not think the specificity
and novelty
of neoliberalism because it is easier to construct a populist
logic upon the
old liberal government at its first stages, with its logic of
demands, than upon
neoliberalism and its logic of supply. For him, demand does not
respond to
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J o s L u i s V i l l a c a a s B e r l a n g a 169
the market-business supply, but rather it responds to power. In
reality, the
beginning of demand is a request. Power, understood as liberal
government,
could articulate, identify, and distribute this request.
Neoliberal government
would claim that it does not receive demands, but instead that
it is regulat-
ing competition to maintain social dynamism, enterprise, the
capitalization
of society, and market supply. Laclau must assume this is not
the case. Order,
he says, cannot fully absorb the demand, it cannot constitute
itself as a co-
herent totality (2005, ix).
But we already know all too well that there is no demand for
what does
not previously appear as supply. Our desire is the desire of the
other. Naturally,
we do not tackle a problem on the order of power, but rather on
all order, on
all subjectivity. Neoliberal power knows this and refers to
productivity as a
totality in fieri, where demand unfolds following supply. Th is
fact guarantees
the continuity of liberty, the repetition and feeding of the
homo oeconomicus
as a premise of neoliberal government. For Laclau, the
constitutive unad-
dressed demands of the liberal power produce something diff
erent. Requests
become claims. For this to happen, the instance to what
exigences are ad-
dressed must be identified. One has to discursively construct
the enemy.
Our doubts about the circular reasoning of Hegemony and Social
Strategy
reappear again. Knowing the enemy would be the same as
identifying the
space of the people, the space of the friend. Th ey are
equivalent.
If there is some relation between On Populist Reason and
Hegemony
and Socialist Strategy, this would be the will to show the
process by which
people emerges without the necessity of a given enemy. Laclau is
not as-
suming that it is constituted by repressive forces. He is
focused on its con-
struction from the popular friends perspective. Th is step is
decisive, since
it would allow an explanation of the emergence of antagonism,
even when
power wants to be liberal. In reality, Hegemony and Socialist
Strategy already
allowed the ordering of the existing diff erences in the demands
in a logic
of equivalences by means of certain discursive forms (Laclau and
Mouff e
2001, 122). Upon assuming the social and linguistic dimension of
the subject,
Laclau did not see any possibility besides that of constructing
a hegemony
with the construction of a discursive space. In Hegemony and
Socialist Strat-
egy, Foucaults Archeology of Knowledge (1982) was useful in
supporting this
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T h e L i b e r a l R o o t s o f P o p u l i s m170
argument. If discourse is regular in the dissemination of
enunciations, such
regularity comes neither from a conceptual constancy nor from an
identity
in the object, but rather from configurative rules that supply
that dissemina-
tion with its unifying principle. Th ese rules were not defined.
For Foucault
these were practical, but for Laclau these implied a discursive
dissemina-
tion that embodied a configuration of equivalence among the diff
erential
discursive positions understood as demands (Laclau and Mouff e
2001, 106).
Certainly, the process of discursive dissemination that implied
something
similar to the Deleuzian logic of diff erence and repetition, a
typical causa
sui logic that would not allow the emergence of a totality as
equivalence.
Th is logicas that of neoliberal capitalismis interested in
productivity, not
in equivalence. Laclaus concern, on the contrary, is to
understand how an
exteriority to dissemination can be established to calculate the
equivalence
between various enunciations and demands. His problem is
classic: how can
a form be produced through dissemination? Th e question is
unavoidable;
Carl Schmitt understood this when he established that the
friend/enemy
distinction resides in the production of gestalt. Actually,
Laclaus argument
is only a review of the technical facet of the construction of
the enemy un-
dertaken by Schmitt.
Laclau spoke of certain logics interested not in dissemination,
but rather
in equality, form, the eff ect of totality, limits, and identity
(Laclau and Mouff e
2001, 131). In fact, his most interesting approach to this can
be found in the
fourth chapter of Populist Reason, titled Th e People and the
Discursive
Production of Emptiness. Th ere he identified these logics,
interested in the
production of equivalences, as rhetorical devices (2005, 12). He
positioned
an ontological constitution of the social that permits
understanding the
place of the political in the rhetorical play that creates
demands. Th ere he
began with a structuralist thesistotality is the condition of
signification
as such (69)which is as powerful his next thesistotality is an
object
which is both impossible and necessary (70). It is like the
constitutive lack:
the concept, the desire, the demand, cannot cross the abyss that
separates
it from the unconscious as such, even though it can only be
desire insofar
it is connected with the subconscious. As we have seen, liberty
funds the
human constitution as long as it lives on the negativeness
produced in that
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J o s L u i s V i l l a c a a s B e r l a n g a 171
relation. Liberty implies, therefore, a perseverance within
desire, because
only there does the possibility remain of connecting with the
totality of the
unconscious, even if it is a continuous lack. Th e logic of
freedom remains in
this disequilibrium. Nevertheless, Laclau has a diff erent point
of view, which
he embraces without considering to what extent neoliberalism
responds bet-
ter to the necessities of his own Lacanian premises.
Laclaus procedure can be summarized as follows: In considering
the lack
that is constitutive of human naturea constitutive emptinessit
becomes
necessary to explore the possibilities this lack off ers
politics. Undoubtedly,
liberalism and neoliberalism are anchored to this breach,
working to keep
discursive equivalence fluid by means of a continuous production
of supply
that punctually interprets desire, although consciously
renouncing totality.
Against this circulation of significations dedicated to feeding
the consumer-
subject imaginary, Laclau asks himself what would happen if the
same con-
stitutive lack that created the emptiness would become an object
of desire itself.
Th is is what he means when he asserts that the category of
totality cannot
be eradicated (2005, 71). It is, of course, understood in this
way by the neolib-
eral regime, which as a substitute of totality invigorates the
interpretations
of desire in the truth of the market; but Laclau demands the
transformation
of the lost totality into an object of desire in and of itself.
If we introduce
this category, the demands addressed would become worthless. In
light of
the recovery of the constitutive lack, all demand would become
equivalent,
but with a value approximating nothing. In turn, every
unaddressed demand
would become a scheme, a verification of what we truly desire,
the one thing,
the Real. Th e regime of the truth of the subject would not
change. Laclau
could therefore say, what we have, ultimately, is a failed
totality, the place
of an irretrievable fullness (70).
Now, when this failed totality becomes a foreground of desire,
an alterna-
tive possibility opens up for Laclau. He asserts that it is
possible that a partic-
ular realitya demandassumes the representation of that
incommensurable
totality (2005, 70). We are now faced with the Hobbesian problem
of how an
invisible reality can render itself visible.25 For Hobbes, this
happens by assign-
ing sovereignty, will, and the action of totality to a visible
reality. Actually, this
is related to the way in whichthinking at the level of
individualsthe unity
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T h e L i b e r a l R o o t s o f P o p u l i s m172
of the people becomes visible. It can be achieved through the
investiture
of a monarch. Th e procedure transforms one partial being into a
sovereign,
and she is converted in turn into a unity that makes visible
what would
otherwise be invisible: the people. For Laclau, this investiture
is similar in
its structure to the hegemonic formation: something particular
represents
totality, something visible makes present the invisible, and
something par-
tial signifies the universal. Th e emptiness behind many
particular desires
is fulfilled in one. Laclau has affirmed the necessity of a
radical investiture
of the significant in order for this to occur (71). Undoubtedly,
it is an action
analogous to a contract, a decision, an extreme nominalist
action, and its
only truth is constitutive lack. Because the constitutive lack
does not have a
proper name, it can only achieve this by investiture, by that
figurative name.
Th is rhetorical operation is a catachresis: there is no proper
name, it is but
feigned to serve the totality. Hobbes would say that the
sovereign is a Per-
sona, an agent. But it cannot be otherwise. Th e Leviathan is a
catachresis. It
is the same in Laclau: the political construction of the people
is, for that
reason, essentially catachrestical (72).
We have here evidently reintroduced the link between totality,
plenitude,
the sovereign representative, and the promise of total aff
ectivityeverything
that was represented by the Weberian notion of charisma, except
that now
it is illuminated in its formative mechanism, as a radical
investiture in the
Freudian sense. If this instance becomes operative, then it is
always possible
to reject addressable demands and to establish an equivalent
among the
unaddressedall on condition that the constitutive lack (compared
to which
the rest is insignificant) becomes present by way of a symbolic
representa-
tive (Laclau 2005, 100). It contains the impossible totality
that negatively
unifies all the unaddressed demands and rejects all those that
are addressed,
because they impede adherence to the totality anticipated by the
symbol
and promised in it. He who does not join this symbolic totality
is excluded
within the common space it creates (106). He who has configured
a subli-
mated value refuses the equivalent values in the market, finds
any attention
to demands to be insignificant, and wishes only to possess the
visible reality
that has been invested with the capacity for representing the
only real thing:
totality. Th is would be the name of the people.
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J o s L u i s V i l l a c a a s B e r l a n g a 173
Th is radical investiture cannot be conceptually represented. It
escapes
every concept and takes us back to mystical belonging, examined
by Laclau
in another book.26 Th erein, aff ection, disillusioned by market
equivalences
supplies and demandsis now satisfied. He who supplies simple
objects and
desires, when what is desired is the Real and the Total thing,
is an enemy.
Th ose who are responsible for this cannot be a legitimate part
of the com-
munity; the chasm between them is irretrievable (Laclau 2005,
86). Th us
we have the Schmitt eff ect: one isolated from every truth, from
every
notion of endangered life-form, from every existential
dimension, created
only from the rhetorical construction that foments sublimation.
It has been
possible thus for rhetoric to build a social division (87).
Schmitt was never a
nominalist: the enemy is an other with real existence. Th e very
most rhetoric
can do is intensify strangeness, but it never creates it. Laclau
seems to say
that, in the age of neoliberalism, rhetoric creates ex nihilo.
In the meantime,
neoliberalism continues to operate because its eccentric,
heterogeneous,
supply-producing rhetoric involved in the work of the culture
industry is
more accurate than the technified rhetoric that aspires to
produce the crys-
tallization of hegemony.
What has been forged here is explicitly related to the process
of conden-
sation in dreams (Laclau 2005, 97). Of course, the same dreamed
character
can maintain an aff ective link with the function of leadership
(97). Th is is
coherent since, in Kantian terms, if the thing in itself has no
concept, then it
can have any name. Laclaus extreme nominalism, sustained both in
Kripke
and in ieks Th e Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), eliminates
any question
about the truth of the radical investiture. Th e originary
baptism imposes
a name, defines an identity supported only by the signifier.27
It makes no
diff erence whether there are rejected demands elevated to
equivalent conse-
quences of a constitutive lack, or the imposition of the sense
of a constitutive
lack that rejects any of the demands addressed by the system as
equivalents.
We obtain the same from a melancholic fundamentalism as we do
from an
articulated system of demands. Th e radical investiture is
nominalist, and it
can be called Allah, Yahweh, originary ethnicity, or people. Th
e central issue
does not reside in demands that may be resolved, but rather in
those who
resolve them.
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T h e L i b e r a l R o o t s o f P o p u l i s m174
5 . T h e F a i t h i n R h e t o r i c
Laclau deals with the theoretical verisimilitude of the
investiture by which
a signifier identifies constitutive lackthe radical lossby
employing a
Lacanian argument, the object a theory proposed by Joan Copjec.
As we
know, Lacan understands the Real as something that cannot be
symbolized.
It thus constitutes a dimension heterogenous to the order of the
symbolic.
Th is order is that which can circulate by means of metaphors,
identities, and
displacements. Th e subject that embarks on these symbolical
displacements
is like the shipwrecked mariner on a raft who hopes to make it,
mysteri-
ously, to the coast of the Real, but who knows that the Real
resides in neither
a coast nor the sea, but rather in a star. Th is relation with
the absence of
the Real is the permanent Gnostic trace in Western culture.
Contemporary
political scienceas wrote Eric Vgelinappeals to this absence. As
such,
the anxiety of the Real continues to encourage displacement,
metonymies,
analogies, metaphors. Th e subject, so as not to completely
withdraw aff ec-
tion for that activity, but to maintain and to repeat it, has to
connect indi-
rectly the symbolic to the Real. With these
connectionsdisplacements and
symbolical operationsthe shipwrecked mariner has to construct
the raft
as she goesquoting Blumenbergs metaphornot with logs, but with
the
foam of the sea, so it will sink when accelerating toward the
fulfillment of
the death drive. Th ose elements in the discursive work of the
symbolwhich,
for a moment, produce juissance and permit connection with the
realare
called object a by Lacan. Blumenberg could call them the work on
the
myth. Laclau reproduces this theory and identifies object a with
the radical
investiture of the hegemonic agenda.28 Th e partial objects
transforms itself
into a totality (Laclau 2005). Th us we can quote the
fundamental text of his
theoretical approach:
Th e aspiration to that fullness or wholeness . . . is
transferred to partial ob-
jects which are the objects of the drives. In political terms,
that is exactly
what I have called a hegemonic relation: a certain particularity
which as-
sumes the role of an impossible universality. Because the
partial character
of these objects does not result from a particular story but is
inherent in the
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J o s L u i s V i l l a c a a s B e r l a n g a 175
very structure of signification, Lacans objet petit a is the key
element in a
social ontology. (115)
We hold then that populist politics are based on the nature of
things in
the deep anthropology and in the social ontology. Th e
consequence can be
easily observed: by radical investiture both an individual and
collective
omnes et singulatimjouissance will be achieved, a symbolical
rhetoric will
be provided, inside of which would be an object a that could
establish the
aff ect of a community and maintain the appearance of an
enjoyment of the
originary possession. In this case, the rhetorically elaborated
symbol would
be the embodiment of a mythical fullness (Laclau 2005, 115), and
its eff ect
would be collective enjoyment. If we remember the name that
Lacan uses for
that constitutive lack, the primordial mother, mythical
plenitude would be
the socially joyful equivalence of the primordial mother. Here
we could recall
Carlo Ginzburgs reflections on Dumezil (1994) and the myth of
matriarchate
during Nazism, and Furio Jesis (1979) parallel reflections on
the work of the
Nazi-technified myth to confirm the structural similitudes of
the rhetorical
construction of the collective identity.
Th e strangest aspect in Laclaus statement can be found in the
fact that
a category explicitly characterized for the explanation of the
untransferable
enjoyment that permits us to livethe object a, Blumenbergs
personal work
on the myth, Warburgs Pathosformelnwhich maintains us as
subjects, in-
dividualizes us in our shared and transmitted cultural horizon,
and that we
will never be able to produce ex nihilo (a category as such, I
repeat), can
be built and fixed by means of a rhetorical structure, to the
extent of being
capable of constituting a collective identity. Th e object a is
what suddenly,
indomitably, unexpectedly, emerges beyond its particularity, the
concrete
trace that, for an instant, allows us to escape from the
shipwreck of the sym-
bol and anchor ourselves in the enjoyment of the real. Th e fact
that symbols
maintain, produce, and reproduce performances of object a is
something
that is not within the power of human beings; its emergence does
not depend
on any kind of rhetorical procedure; it cant be produced or
created. Laclau,
whose anthropology is very limited, believes on the contrary
that building a
radical investiture can off er a symbol that works obediently as
object a for
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T h e L i b e r a l R o o t s o f P o p u l i s m176
a collective, a symbol that produces an aff ection and enjoyment
as though
the Real were submitted to that community that he calls people.
At one
point he assures us that the Freudian concept of
overdetermination points
in the same direction. Other times he calls it sublimation. All
this suggests
that Laclau, even more than Foucault, pictures a governmental
technique
that shares its premises with liberalism, as long as it starts
from a loss, from
a lack, from aff ection, from the unsustainable solitude of
human beings,
from demands. Th is technique can explain the basic problem of
classical
liberalism, how the individuals form a people. To be constituted
by rhetori-
cal procedures, to produce controlled eff ects, suggests a
technification in
the production of the people. In conclusion, it is necessary to
maintain
blind faith in technified rhetoric, which as Carlo
Michelstaedter (1995) has
explained, nobody can sustain without sharing in the nihilistic
premise that
makes it possible.
Laclau has identified this radical investiture, this
productivity of the
symbol that satisfies drives, this capacity to represent an
empty universal
in a particular, with a passage lact, and for this reason has
located in its
origin the Aktus der Freiheit (2005, 228). He has forgotten that
in Lacan this
is a genuine act, prepared as the basis for the relation between
the human
being and the Real, and the key for the ordering of its death
drive. When
these kinds of actsoriginally planned to constitute a space for
individual
identityare projected toward a sociology of the masses and
introduced
rhetorically, they produce, for Laclau, a political use and
configure a collec-
tive identity. Undoubtedly, this is possible and cannot be
denied. Propaganda
and coercion can achieve it in a nihilistic universe. But with
this, unavoidably
hallucinatory elements are introduced into political life, and
consequently,
it specializes in the ordering of the death drive as well.
Laclau cannot evade
these consequences. Th e entire arsenal of the sacrificial logic
is implemented
through it. When in the last pages of his book, Laclau talks
about the rela-
tion with contemporary political thinking, he recognizesafter
nodding
to Rancires influencethat in the face of Negri and Hardt the
moment of
articulation should not be forgotten. Laclau has spoken of the
relevance and
centrality of this moment (2005, 249). In it Laclau identifies a
partisan me-
diation. Explicitly, he talks about the people, but he conceals
the political
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J o s L u i s V i l l a c a a s B e r l a n g a 177
party or the future avant garde by which it is supposed to be
surpassed.
Th en, distinctly, what Foucault already understood arises: the
specific form
of aff ective, totalitarian, sublime, sacrificial governability
was the partisan
government. Th is, with its rhetorical powerits power for
investiture, its
power of over-determination, its power to articulate demandsis
what is
revealed at the end of Laclaus book.
But Laclau, in his analysis, fails to recognize the
verisimilitude of neo-
liberalism as a more coherent direction for his own Lacanian
premises, as a
social organization that is governed by an anthropological base
quite similar
to the one he wants to provide for the political construction of
the people.
Th erefore, if we concede that the present work arises from a
discursive and
symbolic elaboration where we place affections, desires,
processes, and
images that can increase the probability of a circulation of
objects aem-
ployedin conjunction with them for the resolution of drives; if
we accept
this indissoluble synthesis of work and cultural industry, in
which elements of
the work of the myth are embedded, proposing supplies
increasingly diverse
and useful for the prediction of demands; then we must admit
that there is a
closer institution of the truth of the subject in
market-enterprise than in the
technification of a rhetoric directed to off er a disciplined
and sublimated
object a, governable in its social performance. Th e psychic
demands of plea-
sure can be more easily found at the core of the work and
self-capitalitization
than in the formation of a hegemonic rhetoric. Th ere is already
a market to
articulate these demands, one that relies on the supposition of
liberty as the
only means for the provision of a suitable meaning to libidinal
work.
By limiting liberalism to facilitate authenticication of his
populist rea-
son, Laclau cannot see that neoliberalism is thereby made more
coherent.
And that is why subscription to a market-enterprise system where
symbols
circulate appears more credible than the subscription to a
friend/enemy
dynamic, where but one symbol concentrates all libidinal
elements. In a
way, the contradiction can only be resolved by way of something
that Laclau
understands: he speaking to nonliberal societies, closer to the
nineteenth-
century oligarchical constructs. In these, Leftist and Rightist
populist
rhetoric can even constitute a regime of drives, of aff ections,
of dualist
identifications. Th is technology of populist government should
not be an
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T h e L i b e r a l R o o t s o f P o p u l i s m178
object of hopesomething that could provide a solution to
oligarchical soci-
etiesin the face of a true alternative to the neoliberal forms
of government.
[
n o t e s
translators note: Th is lecture was originally written in
Spanish under the title La raz
liberal del populismo: Crtica a Laclau, and delivered in New
Paths in Political Philosophy,
an International Conference celebrated in March 2008 at the
University of Buff alo (NY). I have
tried to remain loyal to the text when possible, only adapting
expressions and concepts widely
known to the informed reader. Since Professor Villacaas employed
mainly Spanish and Italian
translations of primary sources, I have used their equivalent
English, with the aim of providing
the non-Spanish reader the access to the original texts
discussed in it. I want to thank Gabriel
Horowitz for his help with the final draft of this
translation.
1. It constitutes . . . a tool for the criticism of reality:
criticism of a previous governmental-
ity from which one is trying to get free; of a present
governmentality that one is trying
to reform and rationalize by scaling it down; or of a
governmentality to which one is
opposed and whose abuses one wants to limit (Foucault 2008a,
320).
2. Quoting Foucault: Whereas economic regulation takes place
spontaneously, through
the formal properties of competition, the social regulation of
conflicts, irregularities of
behavior, nuissance caused by some to others, and so forth,
calls for a judicial inter-
ventionism which has to operate as arbitration within the
framework of the rules of the
game (2008a, 175). On the concept of regulation and its relation
to Kantian thought,
see Gangemi (2006, 36 et seq.). Regulation tries to limit
governmental excesses. It must
intervene only when the situation is not calmed in the market,
as well as in the right
or in the administration.
3. Th e markets role in the liberal critique has been that of a
test, of a privileged site of
experiment in which one can pinpoint the eff ects of excessive
governmentality and take
their measure (Foucault 2008a, 320).
4. Liberal thought does not start from the existence of the
state, finding in government
the means for achieving that end that the state would be of
itself; it starts instead from
society, which exists in a complex relation of exteriority and
interiority vis--vis the
state (Foucault 2008a, 319).
5. Working on the fundamental themes of the liberal technology
of government, ordolib-
eralism tried to define what a market economy could be,
organized (but not planned or
directed) within an institutional and legal framework, which, on
the one hand, would
off er the guarantees and limitations of the law, and, on the
other, would ensure that the
freedom of economic processes did not produce any social
distortion (Foucault 2008a,
32223).
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J o s L u i s V i l l a c a a s B e r l a n g a 179
6. Indeed, in Security, Territoty, Population, the security
apparatus seems to be much more
connected to the problem of sovereignity, discipline, and
biopolitics: sovereignty, dis-
cipline, and governmental management, which has population as
its main target and
apparatuses of security as its essential mechanism (2008b, 107).
Th is was undoubtedly
not yet the moment for the liberal governmental technique, but
rather it was much
more grounded in the general conception of governmentality as
the ensemble of
institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections,
calculations, and tactics that allow
the exercise of . . . power that has the population as its
target, political economy as its
major form of knowledge, and apparatuses of security as its
essential technical instru-
ment (108). As it can be seen, here the apparatuses of security
are the heirs of police,
not the ancestors of liberal government. Governmentality is not
merely raison dtat,
but rather the means that has allowed the state to survive
(116). Here, the notion of
freedom does not arise, since society is controlled by
apparatuses of security. It cannot
be denied that in Security, Territory, Population, it was
impossible to identify liberal
government, because there was nothing outside of the state,
which is considered as a
totalizing institution (11819). For sure, the notion of civil
society only appears at the
end of the seminar (350), a weak presence when compared to that
of the society of
security (11, 378). In this seminar, biopolitics is merely the
external technique to medi-
cal institutions, and it is of little interest because of the in
fieri statute that characterizes
Foucaults works. But it seems evident that his security
apparatus and his definition of
police are the necessary conditions for the natural freedom of
economy as spontane-
ous regulation of the course of things (344), which makes police
regulations useless
and even harmful. Th e economy and the market will be the first
major breach in the
system of police (343), the second being the relative value of
population (345), no more
an absolute value as in Botero and the raison dtat. In Security,
Territory, Population,
economists will be first in questioning police, first in raising
their critique to the State,
and first in reflecting upon their role. Th is will be the new
sect to question the power of
jurists or politiques (348).
7. More precisely and particularly, freedom is nothing else but
the correlative of the de-
ployment of apparatuses of security. An apparatus of security .
. . cannot operate well
except on condition that it is given freedom (Foucault 2008b,
48).
8. What are we actually dealing with in these natural phenomena
the conomistes were
talking about? We are dealing with processes that can be known
by methods of the
same type as any scientific knowledge. Th e claim to scientific
rationality . . . is assumed
however by the eighteenth century conomistes (Foucault 2008b,
350).
9. Th e topic has been studied by A. Zanini (2006). Th e
bibliography in English is already
important; see G. Burchell (1991, 1996), in French see M.
Bonnafous-Boucher (2004).
10. In this sense, inasmuch as it [the market] enables
production, need, supply, demand,
value, and price, et cetera, to be together through exchange,
the market constitutes a
site of veridiction. I mean a site of verification-falsification
for governmental practice.
Consequently, the market determines that good government is no
longer quite simply
one that is just. Th e market now means that to be good
government, government has to
function according to truth. In this history and formation of a
new art of government,
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T h e L i b e r a l R o o t s o f P o p u l i s m180
political economy does not therefore owe its privileged role to
the fact that it will dictate
a good type of conduct to government. Political economy was
important, even in its
theoretical formulation inasmuch as (and only inasmuch as, but
this is clearly a big
deal) it pointed out to government where it had to go to find
the principle of truth of
its own governmental practice (Foucault 2008a, 32).
11. Foucault defended the idea that the Nazi state was not a
result of the bureaucratization
of the state, but the development of a form of governmentality
without a state. Undoubt-
edly, it was for him the governmentality of a political party
(2008a, 191), a governmental-
ity alien to any inner political regulation.
12. In a way, this was predicted by liberalism with Adam Smiths
idea of the invisible hand.
Th e whole process remains completely unknown because of its
opacity (Foucault 2008a,
281).
13. Economic growth and only economic growth should enable all
individuals to achieve a
level of income that will allow them the individual insurance,
access to private property,
and individual or familial capitalization with which to absorb
risks (Foucault 2008a,
144).
14. Zanini adds that Foucault falls into mille semplificazioni
dottrinali e molte omissioni
(a thousand doctrinal simplifications and a big number of
omissions) (2006, 148).
15. Th e problems in constructing a hegemonic language are
already connected in this book
to the dominion of discursiveness, to the cessation of the flow
of diff erences, to the
constitution of a center: We will call the privileged discursive
points of this partial
fixation, nodal points. Lacan has insisted on these partial
fixations through his concept
of points de capiton, that is, of privileged signifiers that fix
the meaning of a signifying
chain (Laclau and Mouff e 2001, 112). With respect to the note
on Jacques-Alain Miller,
see 88 n.1, where Laclau notes that hegemonic practices are
suturing because they try
to fill in that original lack. We will see that this happens
through object a in section 5,
below.
16. He clearly states it in the preface, hegemonic
rearticulations start at the level of civic
society (Laclau and Mouff e 2001, xii).
17. Any position in a system of diff erences, insofar as it is
negated, can become the locus
of an antagonism (Laclau and Mouff e 2001, 131).
18. Th e method of this rupture: the diff erential absorption of
demands, which segregated
them from their chains of equivalence in the popular chain and
transformed them into
objective diff erences within the systemthat is, transformed
them into positivities and
thus displaced the frontier of antagonism to the periphery of
the social. Th is constitu-
tion of a pure space of diff erences would be a tendential line,
which was later expanded
and affirmed with the development of the Welfare State. Th is is
the moment of the
positivist illusion that the ensemble of the social can be
absorbed in the intelligible and
ordered framework of a society (Laclau and Mouff e 2001,
130).
19. As the social is penetrated by negativitythat is, by
antagonismit does not attain
the status of transparency, of full presence, and the
objectivity of its identities is perma-
nently subverted. From here onward, the impossible relation
between objectivity and
negativity has become constitutive of the social (Laclau and
Mouff e 2001, 129).
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J o s L u i s V i l l a c a a s B e r l a n g a 181
20. On the other hand, there are social antagonisms creating
internal frontiers within
society. Vis--vis oppressive forces, for instance, a set of
particularities establish rela-
tions of equivalence between themselves (Laclau and Mouff e
2001, xiii).
21. Th e delimitation of a certain interiority is required to
construct a totality permitting
the division of this space into two camps (Laclau and Mouff e
2001, 132).
22. Laclau discards too easily Lyotards position, who postulates
the inevitability of dam-
agestortbetween social agents. First, Laclau does not consider
it as strong, and
second, he assumes that it makes any political rearticulation
impossible (Laclau and
Mouff e 2001, xiii). Th ere is no doubt of the fact that it
complicates the emergence of the
friend/enemy diff erence. Ultimately, it allows a policy of
dissent, as it is understood by
Jacques Rancire.
23. Th e first path is to split the unity of the group into
smaller unities that we have called
demands (Laclau 2005, ix).
24. Compare Freud (1997).
25. For the explicit relation with Leviathan, see Laclau (2005,
88).
26. I am referring to Misticismo, retrica y politica (2002). Th
is book is the intermediate step
between Hegemony and Populist Reason. Unfortunately we cannot
deal with it now.
27. Kripke (1980) partially supported Kantian analytic
judgements and responded to
Quines works. His book supposed the foundation of a
Leibnitzianism that understood
identity as naming. Laclau affirms that the identity and the
unity of the object are a
result of the proper process of naming. Th is theory, however,
works only in relation to
the objects that can be presented to intuition, to which the
nameon the outside
of every possible descriptionwill impose on them a rigid
designator. On the con-
trary, naming something that cannot be presented to intuition
cannot impose a rigid
designator. Th e key aspect of this rigid designator is that it
is the same for all the
possible worlds. Th at is the reason why it establishes an
identity. And this is precisely
the the decisive point: that which Laclau wants to name is an
emptiness or a chasm, the
thing-in-itself or the Real, and for that same reason it cannot
have the same designation
in all the possible worlds. In reality, that which designates
the unity of the community
as something complete and perfect can have, and has, many names:
Church, Umma,
nation, class, race, people, among them. Th at is precisely why
these designations do not
establish an identity as Kripke understands it. Kripkes
nominalism is absolute because
it does not recognize anything alien in the act of investing for
the emergence of the
object. Laclaus nominalism, on the other hand, cannot be
absolute, since its point of
departure is an ontological affirmation of the primacy of the
absence.
28. Th e logic of the object petit a and the hegemonic logic are
not just similar: they are
simply identical (Laclau 2005, 116).
r e f e r e n c e s
Bonnafous-Boucher, M. 2004. Un libralisme sans libert. Du terme
liberalisme dans la pense
de Michel Foucault. Paris: LHartmattan.
Burchell, G. 1991. Peculiar Interest: Civil Society and
Governing Th e System of Natural Liberty.
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T h e L i b e r a l R o o t s o f P o p u l i s m182
In Th e Foucault Eff ect: Studies