Abstract:
The general purpose of this article is to evaluate the influence of psychoanalysis on Ernesto Laclau’s political theory, particularly to analyse the ‘affective’ dimension on his conceptualization of populism. According to Laclau, populism is a means for structuring political identity with respect not only to individuals but also to society. It arises as a consequence of the emergence of the political. In this sense, the place of enunciation of the populist leader is what makes the hegemonic totalization of society possible while defining the horizon of political intelligibility in a specific historical context. In On Populist Reason (2005), Laclau establishes an analogy between this partial and contingent elaboration of populist hegemony and the function of the Lacanian ‘object a’. In this article, we analyse this analogy.
Key words:
populism; affective dimension; demand; desire; object a