Is there another people? Populism, radical democracy and immanent critique

Abstract

This article explores the possibility of a notion of left-wing populism that is conceptually opposed to the identitarian logic of embodiment that characterises right-populist interpellations of ‘the people’. In the first part, I will demonstrate, that in Laclau’s constructivist approach, any populist embodiment of the people actually has a partial, subaltern and performative origin. On this basis, it becomes possible to distinguish between a radical-democratic version of the people that is self-reflexively aware of this origin and a regressive and reified one that ideologically betrays and negates its own subaltern tradition of democratic struggle by proclaiming to embody a positive, pre-established substance of ‘rooted’, ‘well-born’ community. In the second part of the article, I will focus on this self-negation as a starting point for an immanent critique of right-wing populism. Such an immanent critique is promising, because it could overcome the shortcomings of decisionism and moralism that limit the contemporary critique of right-wing populism. However, it remains still an open question how to defend and define a negativist truth of political community and subjectivation that is necessary for developing such a left-Hegelian critique of regressive and reified notions of ‘the people’.

Populism and the political system: A critical systems theory approach to the study of populism

“…Here, the ‘people’ no longer chiefly react to elite-dominance or aspire to mobilise an inclusive constituency from below, rather the ‘people’ is stylised as an identity-based entity whose supremacy is in constant danger of being diluted by the ‘others’ and, most importantly, by even more vulnerable social groups ‘from below’. In these cases, contestation tends to change its target and enters a process of ‘self-negation’ (Kempf, 2020: 4): It is not directed at dissolving the concentration of social power ‘above’. Instead, the overall target is the diffusion of social power when outsider groups have seemingly acquired the capacity to dilute the people’s identity.…”

From Jacobin flaws to transformative populism: Left populism and the legacy of European social democracy

“…In the camp of the political left, populism is often cast as essentially a democratic endeavor. Drawing on a conception of inclusive peoplehood, which is not opposed to other vulnerable social groups “below” but solely to the “elite above”, many authors emphasize that it is crucial to pursue a populist strategy in order to overcome existing hegemonies, democratic deficits, ossifications, and class‐rule (Grattan, 2016; Howse, 2019; Kempf, 2020; McCormick, 2001; Mouffe, 2018). Throughout the past few decades, the landscape of research on left populism has grown considerably.…”

Capitalism and contested publicity. A conversation with Nancy Fraser

“…Fraser recognizes the fragmentation of public space, but does not see it as a tendency that has already made any communication between the different publics impossible. Thus, the vanishing point of a left counter-hegemony remains, which brings the different ‘subaltern counter-publics’, some of which are in bitter opposition today, into conversation and unites them, but not through the ‘empty signifier’ of ‘the people’, as in left populist approaches (Laclau 2007; see also Kempf 2020; Marchart 2018), but through the concept of class, which is materialistically determined but freed from confinement to wage labour (Fraser 2022a). Fraser trusts that the contradiction between the ‘rust belt worker’ and the ‘migrant care worker’ (to name just one example), which has been raised to the point of a discussion breakdown, will turn out to be a sham and can be rationally resolved if only the common disadvantage within the capitalist system is brought into focus clearly enough.…”