Metapopulism in-between democracy and populism: tranformations of Laclau's concept of populism with Trump and Putin
Abstract
Laclau introduces three preconditions of populism: the formation of an antagonistic frontier separating the "people" from the enemy; an equivalential articulation of demands; and the unification of social demands into a stable system of signification. I show that with Trump's and Putin's populism these preconditions change.
An antagonistic frontier became perforated with double interpretation of the enemy. Dichotomy "we" versus the "other" is traversed by the division of the signification of the "other" into the external and internal part as regard the signification of the community.
An equivalential articulation of demands transforms into the paralogical chain that establishes cleavages in semantic relations among communities. There are mere "opening bids" among communities without universal dimension as a result of hegemonization of a particular demand.
The unification of social demands which has followed hegemonical logic in Laclau's account of populism turns into an allegorical unification that keeps being separated from all particular demands in order to maintain their paralogical chain. These transformations can be seen as the preconditions of metapopulism that is found in-between the particularized democratic logic and the hegemonized populist one.