This Side of the Frontier: Hegemony, Populism and Pluralism

  1. Javier Franzé
  2. Julián A. Melo
Journal:
Araucaria: Revista Iberoamericana de Filosofía, Política, Humanidades y Relaciones Internacionales

ISSN: 2340-2199,  1575-6823

Year of publication: 2024

Issue Title: Feijóo y el escepticismo ilustrado

Volume: 26

Issue: 55

Pages: 153-173

Type: Article

DOI: 10.12795/ARAUCARIA.2024.I55.07 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDialnet editor

More publications in: Araucaria: Revista Iberoamericana de Filosofía, Política, Humanidades y Relaciones Internacionales

Abstract

This paper poses the following questions: What is pluralistic hegemony? Which are its defining features? Can populism be seen to possess them? We draw on Laclau’s thought to examine whether antagonism and “the name of the leader” as an empty signifier are incompatible with pluralism. With reference to various different perspectives regarding the relationship between pluralism, hegemony and populism, we present our own particular understanding. Our conceptualization distances itself from the notion that pluralism involves an endless proliferation of difference and the agonistic view that seeks to sublimate antagonism, and also from Laclau’s “the name of the leader” as an archetypal signifier of populism. Rather than the political frontier being the antithesis of pluralism, we see it as its precondition, with the empty signifier not representing a problem in itself, except when its name is pre-given. We perceive pluralism as being open to contingency, as a logic of the production and flow of differences.

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