THE OF PEOPLE POPULISTREASONAND THE SUBJECTOF THE POLITICAL

IN

THE

NAME

MARCHART OLIVER
Ernesto Laclau. ON POPULISTREASON. London: Verso,2005. [PR]

The StumblingBlock in an interview,continuallyreturned JamesJoyce, as ErnestoLaclauonce remarked to his to his experience native experience in Dublin, and in similarmannerLaclauhas returned of populismin Argentina.It was the experienceof Peronismthat served as the main historicalbackground for Laclau'slatertheorizationof hegemony and politics, universalism and particularism, representationand the "empty signifier."Yet although Laclau made himself a name as one of the foremost theorists of populism with a chapterof his first book, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory(1977), one could have had the impression that Laclau never returned,in an explicit way, to his early projectof developing a theoryof populism.Now, almost thirtyyears later,this work is resumedwith On Populist Reason. But it is resumedin an ambiguouspolitical and theoreticalconjuncturewhere it is less clear than ever how to conceive of the very natureand subjectof politics. On the one hand, a resurgenceof neopopulistpolitics in many LatinAmericancountriescan be witnessed (not to mention the many right-wingpopulists in Europeor populist versions of religious fundamentalism), togetherwith a renewedinterestin the theoreticalcategory of "the people," not only in Laclau's work but also, for instance, in the work of Jacques Rancibre.Yet on the other hand, it seems that the antiglobalizationmovement and other "dispersed"forms of political action cannot so easily be subsumedunder the rubricof populism.And hasn't "thepeople," as a theoreticalcategory,come underattackby other quartersof political thought?In the eyes of Paolo Virno, Antonio Negri, and Michael Hardtthe concept of "multitude," linked to alternativeforms of political existence, had long been subduedby political thoughtto the identitarian concept of "thepeople"and has to be liberatedtoday. What is at stake in these debates is not only politics in the regionalor "ontic"meaning of a functionalsystem of society or a certainform of humanaction linkedto a certain social agent. What is at stake is, I suspect, the very name of the political subject. Does a or independent of syspolitical subjectexist beyond the field of passive subject-positions, temic functions?And if yes, what is the name of this subject?The "party," the "people," the "multitude," the "movement"? The consequences of these questions are much more than would one far-reaching imagine, for what is at stake in the debate over the name of the subjectis, simultaneously, the name of thepolitical as ontological "ground" of the social andof society. Putdifferently,the way in which we conceive political subjectivityhas consequencesfor the way in which the natureof politics as such is envisaged vis-A-visthe sedimented realm of social processes. For instance, a name like "multitude," as Laclau perceptively argues, is not only theoreticallymalconceived but also politically debilitat-

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ing as it implies the "completeeclipse of politics" [PR 242]. For if political subjectivity, as in Hardtand Negri's approach,consisted only of a pure dispersion of singularities, therewould be no need for political strategiesof equivalentialreaggregation, andwe will in the end deliver ourselves to an antipolitical,eschatological"politicsof awaiting." Against antipoliticaltrends in contemporarypolitical thought,of which the theory of multitudeis but an example, Laclau articulatesin his new book a staunch defense of the name of the people and of populism as the very logic of the political. For what is at issue in a theory of populism, as much as in any political theory,is the "natureand logics of the formationof collective identities"[ix], of identitieswhose existence cannot be taken for grantedas long as they are not politically constructed.On Populist Reason, as Laclau remarks,grew out of a basic dissatisfactionwith sociological perspectives that either take the "group"as a basic unit whose social existence precedes its political constructionor dissolve the political subject altogetherby locating the latter within wider functionalistor structuralist paradigms(that is to say, within society and the social). In so doing, the social sciences participatein the antipoliticaltraditionof Westernthought which, since Plato, has been complicit in the effort at rejectingthe political in favor of the managerialadministration of a well-ordered"good" or "just"society. The name of the people, far from serving-as Virno or Negri suggest-as an identitarian principle of social closure, has in this traditionbeen considereda majorobstacle to the achievement of a well-orderedsociety. As Laclau shows in his analysis of nineteenth-century "crowd psychology," the masses have constitutedthe grande peur of the nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies.Wherethe name of the people was associatedwith crowd behaviorit was considered an "aberrant"political phenomenon,emotional and irrational.Gustave Le Bon perceived crowd action as a contagious disease borderingon madness and brain disorders(which were also consideredcontagious). Within the paradigmestablished by Le Bon and continuedby HippolyteTaine and the earlierGabrielTarde,the behaviorof crowds cannot have any rationalityor logic of its own, as it is triggeredby nothing other - a deficiency sharedby the crowd with womthanthe pathologicalabsenceof rationality en, "madmen," "savages,"children,and alcoholics. In such manner,a more or less stable frontierwas erected between the normaland the pathological,even as the latter-given its contagiousnature--always threatenedto destabilizethe former. Latertheoriesof populism will inheritthis dubious legacy of, as Laclaucalls it, "the denigrationof the masses." As a political phenomenon,populism, Laclau holds, "was always linked to a dangerousexcess, which puts the clear-cutmoulds of a rationalcomcollective behavior,populism munityinto question"[x]. An exemplaryform of irrational was dismissed and, in turn,put in use for "thediscursiveconstructionof a certainnormality, of an ascetic political universe from which its dangerouslogics had to be excluded" [19]. But even where in mainstream political science approachespopulismis not depicted as threat,what will nonethelessbe stressedis "its vagueness, its ideological emptiness,its its transitory character" [13]. anti-intellectualism, These mainstream theoriesof populism-crowd psychology of the nineteenthcentury and the social theoriesof populism of the twentiethcentury- are subjectedby Laclau to a symptomatologicalreading. It is as if something in the phenomenon of populism constantly escaped the grasp of any positive description and theorization.Research in the social sciences produces incoherentlists of supposed empirical features of populist enumerationsthat already in his article of the 1970s movements, resulting in arbitrary remindedLaclau of surrealistpoetry. These classificatory efforts can only give rise to arbitrary typologies andcannotprovideus with coherentcriteriathatwould help to define the phenomenon.Thus, populismemerges as the "locus of a theoreticalstumblingblock" [4]. Since empiricistanalyses are not in possession of the ontological tools necessary to uncover the significance of the phenomenonand to decipher the name and true role of

its subject,populism and the people constitutean inherentlimit to political analysis and political theory. Laclau,taking seriously this symptomof an inherentlimit, resolves the problemthat positive science encounterswhen faced with populism by a bold and radical move. By and invertingthe role usually assigned to populism, the latteris turnedfrom an aberrant irrationalphenomenonat the marginsof the social into the central feature and specific rationalityof the political: "populismis the royal roadto understanding somethingabout the ontologicalconstitutionof the political as such"[67]. Laclaudiscovers thatthe dichotomic simplificationof the political space, a common feature of populist mobilization, must not be considereda mere by-productof populistpolitics. It is the very conditionof all political action, the actual form of political rationality.For if political rationalityis of populism is "justthe encapsulatedin the logic of antagonization,then the trademark special emphasis on a political logic which, as such, is a necessaryingredientof politics tout court."Similarly,the vagueness typicallyassociatedwith populist symbols functions as a constant dimension of social rationality,"a preconditionto constructingrelevant political meanings"[18]. What is more, antagonismand the phenomenonof vagueness or emptinessare mutuallyrelatedby Laclauwithin a generaltheoryof politics developed underthe name of hegemony.Ideological emptiness is a directresult of the social rationality expressed by populist mobilization:the emptying of the signifier results from the dichotomizationof the social into chainsof equivalence(at the expense of the differential content of the signifiersthatenterthe equivalentialchain). This logic of the empty signifierhas been developed by Laclau before, and we will returnto his theory of signification, but in his new book it is extended into a general theoryof namingthatbearsradicalimplicationsfor the way we envisage political action. is an entity thatpreexiststhe process of While for mainstream social sciences the "group" in the a social naming, hegemonytheoryapproach agentexists only to the extentthat s/he is named.Politics is not the expressionof pregiveninterestsor the will of a certaingroup, but politics is to be understoodas the very process by which a group assumes its name. by Laclauas a theoryof naming:if the identityof Hegemony theoryis thus reformulated a given social group cannot be derived from a stable groundwithin the social (the position within the relationsof production,for instance),it can only be the resultof a process of hegemonic signification/articulation. The only thing thatholds togetherthe groupwill be the name emergingfrom this process. The name, consequently,"does not express the unity of the group,but becomes its ground"[231].

A Theoryof Everything? -Tracing Out the Problem The two main aspectsof this Laclauianintervention,which are strictlycorrelative,henceforthamountto (a) his "inversion" of populismfrom a marginalized phenomenoninto the of the in this the return of the people as a move, (b) very logic political, and, implicated name for political subjectivity.Now, these radicalmoves areobviously boundto encounter resistancefrom the positive sciences and from rival theories.The line of criticism, in both cases, can easily be imagined. In the case of (a) it will be arguedthat the notion of populismloses any specificityif the termis supposedto designatenot only a specific form of political agitationbut political action as such. And this might immediatelylead to the question:why then call it populismat all (andnot simply "politics")?Laclauhimself tries to anticipatethis line of criticism when he writes in the preface: One consequenceof this interventionis that the referentof "populism" becomes blurred,because manyphenomenawhich were not traditionallyconsideredpop-

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ulist come underthatumbrellain our analysis. Here thereis a potentialcriticism of my approach,to which I can only respondthat the referentof "populism"in social analysis has always been ambiguous and vague. A brief glance at the literatureon populism [. . .] suffices to show that it is full of references to the evanescence of the concept and the imprecisionof its limits.My attempthas not been to find the true referentof populism, but to do the opposite: to show that populism has no referential unity because it is ascribed not to a delimitable phenomenon but to a social logic whose effects cut across many phenomena. Populism is, quite simply,a way of constructingthe political. [xi] The first partof this answer seems ratherdefensive, at least if one forgets that Laclau's interventiondoes consist in unravelingthe symptomaticcharacterof the ambiguity and vagueness usually associated with populism in order to invert the latter's status. It is the last sentence where the real answer is hidden, yet remainsformulatedin a--surprisingly-undecided fashion.At first sight, this answerdoes not seem to successfully refute the criticism.For what does it mean to say thatpopulism is a way of constructingthe political when earlierit was claimed thatpopulismis synonymouswith politics tout court?' If populism is only one of many (or some? or two?2)possible ways of constructingthe political, how can populismbe the logic or rationalityof politics eo ipso? In the following I will try to demonstratethat this impressionof apparentincoherencecan be avoided by between "politics"andthe "political,"or introducinga muchmore explicit differentiation the "ontic"andthe "ontological."But in orderto solve the riddleof why for Laclaupopulism is the name of politics tout court, we will have to apply,if we want to remainwithin Laclau'sargumentative framework,the logic of naming- outlinedby Laclauhimself--to intervention to find a namefor the his own namingeffort,thatis, to his theoretico-political and the to (re)name political "populism." political, One may sense alreadyhow this relatesto the criticismtowardLaclau'ssecond main intervention,which consists in naming the subject of the political "the people." In his book, Laclau seems to arguethat while, on the one hand, populism is the name for politics tout court in the sense that every politics is populist to some degree, on the other hand chains of equivalence can be constructedaroundmany differentempty signifiers, not only aroundthe name of the people--which implies the hypotheticalpossibility of populism without "thepeople." Hence, a "shiftin his position concerningthe location of the signifier 'the people"' has been observedwith respectto Laclau'searlierformulations wondered: of the 1970s. As YannisStavrakakis [I]f populism becomes synonymouswithpolitics, and if any signifier can potentially become the nodal point of a populist discourse, how can we conceptually accountfor the differencebetweenan equivalentialdiscoursearticulatedaround "thepeople" [. . .] and any other equivalentialdiscourse? While,according to Laclau's earlier position only the first one would be trulypopulist, now both
Laclau holds at somepoint that the people are only "oneway of constitut1. Correspondingly, it is not the only way of doing so. ing the unityof the group," and goes on explaining: "Obviously, Thereare other logics operating within the social, and makingpossible types of identitydifferent from thepopulist one" [73]. 2. One explanationwouldbe to say, as will be outlinedin a moment,that the second, nonpopulist way of constructingthe political consists in a differentialand institutionalized form of politics (what Gramsciwould have called "passiverevolution").Suchpolitics would not be politics in the strict sense, however,since thefield of differences is, in Laclau's theory, equivalent to the social and not to the political (which consists in the equivalentialordering of differences).So a certain ambiguityremains.

are populist,possibly to the same extent(if bothfollow an equally equivalential logic). In other words, the risk here is to lose the conceptual particularity of populism as a toolfor concretepolitical analysis. [263] Stavrakakissees a danger of sacrificingthe benefits of Laclau's empirically more productive earlier notion of populism and opts for "a concept of populism capable of mediating between the ontological/formallevel and the ontic level of the signifying reality of concrete political struggles; serving as an interface between theoreticalanalysis and the reality of political practice. In that sense, referenceto the structurallocation of 'the people' remainscrucial as a definingcriterionin the analysis of populism,togetherwith the criterionof equivalence"[264]. I would suspectthat such an approach,while it seems reasonableand productivefor empiricalanalysis, runs the risk of missing the very radicality of Laclau's intervention,which precisely consists in the bold move--on the ontological level--to give a name to the subjectof the political and to turnwhat before was consideredthe stumblingblock of political analysis into the very foundationof political thought.Again, potentialconfusion could be avoided if the differentlevels of argumentation-the ontic and the ontological-are kept apartas neatly as possible (if only to be between two rearticulated in a second step). That is to say, one clearly has to differentiate an within of or of the as actor the "names" political people: "people" politics, signifier discourse, and the people as the subjectof the political. And once more we have to ask what is at stake in giving this name to the subjectof the political:"thepeople."

How to Name Naming Let us recapitulatethe problemwe have encounteredin our initial reading,the problem thatrelatesto a certainindecisionor ambiguitywith respectto the status of bothpopulism and the nameof the people. On the one hand,populismdescribesa particular social logic, and "thepeople" is simply the signifier/name--or one of the possible signifiers/namesthat guaranteesthe unity of popular identities. On the other hand, populism becomes synonymouswith politics toutcourt(or at least a necessarydimensionof all politics), and the nameof the people seems to point at the more radicalinstanceof political subjectivity thanspecific forms of political agency or identity).In orderto answerthis twofold (rather problem--regardingthe name of the political and the name of its subject-we will have to reconstruct Laclau'stheoryof naming in more detail. For a startingpoint to his theory of naming Laclau turnsto the debate between dein analyticphilosophy.In a nutshell,descriptivists(like scriptivistsand antidescriptivists BertrandRussell) argue that propernames are related to their objects by way of one or a cluster of descriptivefeatures.A traditional as example would be the name "Aristotle" an abbreviateddescriptionfor "pupilof Plato";Laclau gives the example of "GeorgeW. Bush" as an abbreviateddescriptionof "the US Presidentwho invaded Iraq"[PR 101]. The antidescriptivists, spearheaded by Saul Kripke,argueagainstthis idea, since even if in anotherworld Bush had not invaded Iraq and Aristotle had become a painterinstead of a philosopher,the name "Bush"and the name "Aristotle"would still apply to them. Instead,Kripkefamously arguesin Naming and Necessity that names (and this holds not only for propernames but also for common names such as "gold")are rigid designators thatreferto one and the same object in all possible worlds.They designatetheirobject not throughone or a bundleof descriptionsbut throughan initial and foundingact of naming, that is, to use Kripke'sterm,of "primalbaptism".While this solution is more convincing than the descriptivistsolution, it encountersproblemsof its own, and here Laclau refers to Slavoj Zifek's discussion of the debate.Accordingto Zifek [89-97], antidescriptivists

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cannotprovidean answerto the problemof what makes the object of "rigiddesignation" identicalto itself in all possible worlds and beyond all descriptivechanges.The Lacanian solution, proposedby Zifek, is that this "X" which guaranteesthe identity of the object in all counterfactual situationsis nothingelse than"theretroactiveeffect of namingitself: it is the name itself, the signifier,which supportsthe identityof the object" [95]. Laclau basically concurs:the identityof any object, in Laclau'scase the identityof "thepeople," is not "expressed"by the name "the people"but is the retroactiveresult of the very process of naming.Naming hence becomes productivein a new sense, because it is no longer restrictedto the momentof puredesignation,as in Kripke'sprimalbaptism,but assumes a dimension of performativity. Yet althoughLaclau grantsthe antidescriptivist camp the merit of having liberated,to a significantdegree, the function of the name and of naming, it was only with Lacanthatthe name, that is, the signifier,became trulyemancipated from any enthrallment to the signified. Laclau detects a progressiveemancipationof the orderof the signifier(vis-A-visthe signified and, of course, the referent)and, thus, of the autonomyof naming: For descriptivism,the operationsthatnamingcan performare strictlylimitedby the straitjacketwithinwhich they takeplace: the descriptive features inhabiting any name reduce the order of the signifier to the transparentmediumthrough which a purely conceptual overlapping between name and thing (the concept we have the being their commonnature)expresses itself. Withanti-descriptivism of the signifier(of the name). Thisparting of the beginningof an autonomization ways between naming and description,however,does not lead to any increase in the complexityof the operationsthat 'naming'canperform, for althoughdeswhat is designated is no to the ignation longer ancillary description, identityof the its is ensuredbeforeand quite independently of process of being named.It is we a real breakthrough: the identity with the Lacanian that have only approach and unityof the object resultfrom the very operationof naming. [PR 104] The name "becomes the groundof the thing,"but in orderto performthis role the name has to become empty: naming has to be conceptualizedalong the lines of the logic of the empty signifier,elaboratedby Laclau in an importantearlierwork ["WhyDo Empty Signifiers Matterto Politics?" 36-46]. I have alreadyhinted at the fact that the emptying of the signifier is, in Laclau's theory, a direct result of the equivalential extension of demands for which the empty signifier functions as a nodal point. To take one of Laclau's preferredexamples, the name "Solidarnosc"initially functioned as a signifier situationof dockers in Gdansk.If it had signified demandsin the particular for particular a certaindemandof these workersonly, this demandcould have been accommodatedby the institutionalsetting of the Polish system, it could have been integratedinto a system of differences.To the extent that it connected with other demandsby other discontented sectors of society, however, a chain of equivalence was erectedthat the system could no longer handle in a differentialway. From the perspective of this chain of equivalence, the communist system functioned as the antagonisticother, which, in purely negative terms, served as the groundfor the equivalentiallinking of the most diverse antisystemic demands. "Solidarnosc"now turnedfrom the slogan of a local group of workersinto a name for oppositionas such. At the same time, though, it had to be emptiedof its specific content in orderto function as a name for a much wider counterhegemonicequivalential chain. It turnedinto an empty signifierincreasinglydevoid of particular signifieds. It would be hardto overlook how strongly Laclau is inspiredby the Lacanianlogic of the signifier, yet at the same time it must be stressed that at a certain point Laclau's theory takes a differentroute. The empty signifier is not a "pure"signifier or "signifier

withoutsignified."The latternotion, for Laclau,would be self-defeating,since a signifier without any signified could only produce noise and the process of signification would the empty signifieris not located outsidethe realm breakdown completely.Consequently, of signification,but "is a place, within the system of significationwhich is constitutively in that sense it remainsempty, but this is an emptiness which I can sigirrepresentable; because we are dealing with a void within signification"[PR 105]. Put differently, nify, there will always be a remainder,a "rest"of signifieds--we will returnto the question of remainder--andhence the empty signifierwill always only be tendentiallyempty (the the signifier that serves as a nodal point longer the chain of equivalence, the "emptier" of for this chain will be). Nevertheless, Laclau adheresto the Lacanian"breakthrough" point, as the groundof the thing, since, as he theorizingthe name, as nodal or "quilting" repeatedlystates, "the identity and unity of the object results from the very operationof naming"[104]. But the crucialexpansionof the Lacanianlogic of the signifier,of course, consists in the political turngiven to the namingprocess, which is now explained by the social "dialectics"of difference and equivalence. The hegemonic struggle over the expansionof a chain of equivalence at the expense of the field of difference, and concomitantly over the emptying of the signifier, is exactly what politics is about.The "primal of a political agentor popularidentity,by which the agentor identitycomes into baptism" existence, amountsto nothingelse thana hegemonic intervention. of politics, that to Laclau'sown "primalbaptism" If we now apply these instruments is to say, to his surprisinginterventionof naming politics "populism,"then the political aspect of this very move should by now be apparent.First of all, if by populism we understanda political strategywhich aims at the dichotomizationof the social and the emptyingof the signifier,then it is evident, given the theoryof politics just outlined,that there is no politics that is not populist to some extent. Yet the puzzling question remains why a political strategythataims at the dichotomizationof the social and the emptyingof at all, if it is a featureof every politics. Doesn't the signifiershouldbe dubbed"populism" I suppose that this questioncan only be given a become redundant? the term"populism" satisfactoryanswer,within the Laclauianframework,if it is understoodthat "populism" for Laclau is not so much a concept of the political thanthat it serves as the name of the bethis claim it is crucial to rememberLaclau'sdifferentiation political. To substantiate tween concept and name, which neatly follows from his theoryof naming. For Laclau,the conceptualorderis structured accordingto the logic of difference-a is to the "content" particular assigned concept throughits very differentialposition vis-aivis all otherdifferentialpositions- while the nominalorderworkson the basis of equivainto an lence: a name emerges as a nodal point aroundwhich differences are structured In name that the second it is this takes over the task of chain. case, equivalential single a the of without expressing "anyconceptualunity signifying system representing totality that precedes it" [108]. There exists no conceptualcorrelate(no signified) to which the medium name (or the signifier) could refer.Naming does not occur within a transparent but on an uneven and opaque terrainwhere the name will always search in vain for the concept.3Now, a social science approachto populism will always remainwithin the
3. In descriptivism,for instance, the role of descriptivefeatures is to "reducethe order of the signifier to the transparentmediumthroughwhich a purely conceptual overlappingbetween name and thing (the concept being their commonnature)expresses itself' [104].This points to the further aspect of a "concept,"apartfrom its differentialaspect, which should not go unnoticed: the "concept"is what is supposedas the transparent correlateto the name. In traditionallyMarxist discourse,for instance, a conceptual content of "workingclass" is supposed by which the object "workingclass" can be recognizedwithinthe objectiveworld of the relationsof production.In this case, the name "is the transparentmediumthroughwhich somethingwhich is conceptuallyfully apprehensibleshows itself" [183].

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conceptual order.By developing classificatory systems and enumerationsof supposed and surrealistas they appear,such an apdescriptive featuresof populism, as arbitrary proach will always seek to conceptuallygraspthe phenomenonof populism by delimitother forms of politics. For Laclau, on the other hand, populism ceases ing it vis-ha-vis to be a regional phenomenonand becomes the name for politics tout court; this means now designatesthe equivalentialunity of all things political.We see how this "populism" far or classification, operation, from being only an operationof conceptualdetermination involves the truly political interventionof naming.To frame it in the Laclauianterms of hegemony theory:an ontic concept of politics (populism)takes over the task of representcondiing the ontological natureof thepolitical, thatis to say, of the quasi-transcendental tion of politics tout court. Now we realize why it is crucial to distinguisha strong notion of "thepolitical"from "politics,"or the "ontological"dimension from the "ontic,"if we want to determinethe seemingly ambivalentstatus of Laclau's notion of populism.4In a certainregard,the latterremainsa particular (ontic) form of politics, and yet it assumes a universalrepresentative function as the name for the political. Hence, Laclau's theory of populism in itself involves a moment of the political, a performativedimension of naming. And wasn't this precisely, as I mentionedin the beginning, the ultimateaim of Laclau's attemptto unravelthe marginalizedand denigrated notion of populism (and of "the people") as a symptomof the negation or disavowal of the political in political thought?Isn't this disavowal of the political as the instituting moment of the social and as index (in the form of antagonism)of the impossibility of society-as-totality,that is, as an ontological dimension, the reason why any effective social theory-in all its empiricist,functionalist,sociologist, politicizationof mainstream or systems-theoretical variants--is always alreadyblocked from the outset? It is by givthe name of ing "populism"to the political, and thus invertingthe very terms of debate, that Laclau changes from the register of difference(the conceptualorder)to the register of equivalence (the nominal order),thus contributingnot only to the theorizationof the political but also to the politicizationof theory.5

The TwoNames of the People After having outlined some of the political stakes involved in Laclau's theorizationof populism, I would now like to approachthe second problemencapsulatedin the double appearanceof "thepeople" in Laclau's book. On the one hand,to recapitulate,"thepeople" is the empty signifieror name which holds togetherpopularidentities(andhypothetically every signifier could assume this function). In this sense it can be equated with a social agent or identity.On the otherhand, "thepeople" seems to fulfill a more particular fundamental role as the inherentlimit or "stumblingblock"encountered by most variants
4. Concerningthe genealogy and currentuse of this "politicaldifference"between "politics" and "thepolitical," I referthe reader to a monographI have devoted to the topic. Thepolitical difference, as I claim there,has to be understoodas a politicized version of the ontological difference -a groundthat simultaneouslyis an abyss-of postfoundationalsocial and as the actual "ground"

Post-foundational Political [Marchart, thought Thought].

5. It goes withoutsaying that Laclau, of course, does not leave the conceptualorder of theory as such, hence we will still find a Laclauian concept of "thepolitical" as elaborated in a differential way vis-a-vis his conceptsof the social (the realmof sedimented practices) or society. Thepoint is that, apartfrom his theoreticalwork, which to some degree-simply by being theoretical--will remainwithin the conceptualorder,Laclau's theory of naming-when applied to his own theoretical intervention-allows us to exactly determinethe momentof the political (of equivalence) in his work.And this is the momentof populism.

10

of political theory.Here "thepeople"seems to become, throughLaclau'sinversionof the very termsof debate,the name for the political subjecttoutcourt;in otherwords it points at the more radicalinstanceof political subjectivityas such. Before proposingan answer analogous to the one we found with respect to the double appearanceof "populism,"it should be underlinedthat the implicationsin this case are different,since it is not only the ontological natureof politics (that is, the name of the political) which is at stake, but the existence and name of the subject of the political. Put differently,Laclau's subtle yet permanentshift between the two names of the people does not involve two "ontic" versions of agency but constitutessomethingof the orderof a wager with respect to the "ontological"existence of a subject of the political. Nothing could be less self-evident', for we never encounter"the subject"in political reality--what we encounterare always political agents, organizedin form of groups,parties,movements,networks,or particular as Laclau would prefer,discursive identities.While the categoryof subjecthad been relegated to the dustbinof intellectualhistoryby most strandsof the social sciences- which on this account find themselves in rareagreementwith many strandsof postmodernism and poststructuralism (including Laclau and Mouffe's own approachof Hegemonyand Socialist Strategy,wherethey provideda Foucauldiantheoryof subjectpositions only)at the core of political thought,by approachesinfluencedby it found itself repatriated, psychoanalysis(includingLaclau'sown work from New Reflectionson the Revolutionof Our Timeonward).So, before anythingelse, Laclau's decision of naming the subjectof the political amountsto the wager that a subjectof the political exists to begin with (that is, it exists apartfrom subjectpositions on the ontic plane of the social). Yet if we decide to theorize the subject of the political in analogy to the Lacanian conceptof the subject,we also have to agreethatthe existence-or ek-sistencerather-of the latteris nothingthat could be determinedby a logical or empiricalproof; it can only be supposed.Supposingthe political subjectthen meansgiving a nameto what, in the last instance, must remain nameless-and still we feel the political exigency to find such a name.This will obviously be a difficult,perhapsparadoxicaltask inasmuchas the subject in Lacandoes not have a name. The subject--no matterwhetherwe designate it as subject-of-lack or sujet barrd--is firstof all a theoreticalconcept ratherthan a name (in the sense in which a theory of the latteris elaboratedby Laclau). So what is involved, then, in Laclau'sdecision to give a name to the subjectand to name it "thepeople"? a mere "tag"put on some It was said before thatby "name"one must not understand thatwhich constitutes but rather of in itself the that preexisted very process naming, entity the ground of an entity, which is why the very existence of something will depend on a ("themomentof unityof popularsubjects processof namingandnot simply of predication is given at the nominal, not at the conceptual,level" [118]). By once again applyingthis theoryof namingto Laclau'sown primalbaptismof the political subjectas "thepeople," we will observe thatfor Laclauthe name of the people becomes the groundof the political subject, of political subjectivityper se. One may object that this is a ratherpeculiar claim, for how can an ontic signifierof politics ("thepeople") turninto the groundof the ontological instance of the subject?But this relationof chiasmaticreversibilitybetween ontic beings and ontological ground is precisely the point of the radical Heideggerian notion of the onto-ontologicaldifference.For Heideggerthis differencehas to be thought as difference,as the evental play of "being"between the ontological "Being"and ontic "beings,"a play (between groundand abyss) that makes impossible an ultimatefoundation-which on the other side does not dispense us of laying some ground, if only in an always provisionaland historicallycontingentfashion. If we relatethis Heideggerianand insight to the political differencebetween "politics"and "thepolitical," postfoundational evident that every name, every contingentyet ontological ground,can be will it become providedonly from within the ontic realm of names, that is, of the reservoirof available

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name from the ontic sphereof politics will have to take political signifiers.A particular up the task of becoming the name for the ontological subjectof the political. If the double appearanceof "the people" in Laclau is explained along the lines of the ontological difference (as difference between politics and the political), it must be concludedthatwhile the subject(as lack) does not exist as an ontic entity and remainsan ontological "concept,"it has to assume an ontic name in orderto be politicallygrounded. Laclau'sintervention--and therein,I hold, lies precisely the political aspect of the theory developed in On Populist Reason--consists in the groundingof the concept of subjectby way of a primalbaptism,thatis, by namingit "thepeople."The resultingchiasm between and hegemonic "agent"can best be illustrated "subject" by the famous Lacanianformula, in rephrased Laclauianterms: "thepeople" (as an emptysignifier) is the signifier which represents "thepeople" (the subject) to all other signifiers (of a chain of equivalence). It is precisely because the subject as such is nameless and remainsabsent, that it has to be represented. And it can only be representedby assuming a name, which by necessity will be both provisionaland politically binding. "Binding,"because other signifiers will be boundtogetherin a chain of equivalenceby this name.Yet the representative function of the name remainstwofold: the name representswhat could be called the identityprinciple of this chain within the ontic continuumof politics, but it also representsthe absent ontological instanceof the subjectof the political within the ontic realm of the social.

The People and the Democratic Horizon What is not fully answeredby the above account, however,is the question:why is it this ontic name-"the people"--which as an empty signifier assumes the role of representing the ontological subject for the other signifiers?Why this centralrole of the name of the people--and not of any other name? Obviously, the Laclauianinterventionwould be ratherunconvincing if it was based in pure voluntarism.The choice to assign such a central function to the name of the people cannot be an arbitrary one, even if on the other hand it is accepted that a stable conceptual groundfor this decision will never be reached. Laclau's own outline of the conditions that made possible the emergence and expansion of popularidentities is rathercursory and consists in the diagnosis that "we inhabita historicalterrainwhere the proliferation of heterogeneouspoints of rupture and [PR 230]. The antagonismsrequireincreasinglypolitical forms of social reaggregation" interrelated historicalconditionsbehindthis phenomenonof increasingsocial dislocation are subsumedby Laclau underthe label of globalized capitalism.6 But as Laclauhimself knows very well, the dislocationsproducedby globalized capitalismcannotexplain why it was the name of "the people" which came to occupy such a central role within our of politiimaginary.It could have been any other signifier,since the potential"content" cal reaggregationis not predetermined fact "form" the or of We thus dislocation. by pure have to descend to the ontic plane of discourseand analyze the emergenceof the Western of the name of the people. political imaginaryin orderto explain the predominance Laclau himself an does not So, although provide explicit historical explanation, the symptomaticfunction ascribedto the "people"may provide some hint regardingthe latter's centrality.Could it not be that the denigrationof the people must be read not as
6. Thislabel ofglobalized capitalismrequiressome specification.By capitalism,Laclauholds, "we should no longer understanda self-closed totality governed by movementsderivedfrom the contradictionsof commodityas an elementary form. Wecan no longer understandcapitalismas a purely economic reality,but as a complexin which economic,political, military,technologicaland other determinations-each endowed with its own logic and a certain autonomy-enter into the determinationof the movementof the whole" [PR 230].

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an indicationof theirmarginalstatus,but exactly as an indicatorof their--hidden or dispolitics? Marginalityalone would not exavowed--foundational role for contemporary to the people. On the contrary, it is not due to their plain the symptomaticstatusattributed marginalstatus that the people found themselves denigratedby (anti)politicalthought; it is because of their central role in what Claude Lefort calls the symbolic dispositive of democracy[see Democracy; The Political Forms]. If this is the case, the antipolitical denigrationof the people would have to be understoodas partof an antidemocraticcounterattack of those who, historically,have already assumed aiming at the remarginalization the subjectrole of politics.7 This assumptionis based on the Lefortianinsight thatwith the democraticrevolution the role of the people radicallychanged. The democraticrevolutioninstigates a caesura within Westernpolitical history,an irreversiblesymbolic shift. With the decapitationof the King, as Lefort famously claims, the umbilical cord between society and its transcendentinstanceof legitimationwas cut off. The place of power was emptied and from then on could only temporarilybe reoccupied by political forces. Simultaneously,the democratic dispositive was installed through the separationof the registers of power: law and knowledge. A "dissolutionof the markersof certainty"occurredby which the very groundof society became irresolvablydestabilized.Laclauto a largeextent accepts this historicdepictionof the democraticrevolutionand its symbolic consequences while also criticizingLefort'sanalysis of democracyfor being concentrated exclusively on liberal-democratic subjects [PR regimes, and not on the constructionof popular-democratic 166]. I would claim, however, that Lefort's account of the democraticrevolution as an irreversibleevent could step in as a historicalexplanationfor the centralityof the empty signifier of the people. When Laclau [169] holds that the constructionof a "people""is the sine qua non of democratic functioning,"since without "productionof emptiness there is no 'people,' no populism, but no democracyeither,"then this relation is reversible: without the democraticrevolutionthere is no expansion of the name of the people into the imaginaryhorizonof all politics. Hence, the caesura of the democraticrevolution is the historicalsine qua non for the logic of populism assuming the quasi-ontological role of politics tout court. Again we see how the (quasi-)transcendental conditions of possibility of politics (the ontological level) relate, in a chiasmaticand reversibleway, to their very own historical (ontic) conditions. Conditions of possibility and possibility of conditions are inseparablyintertwined. To reflect on the implicationsof Lefort's account of the democraticrevolution will statusof the name of the peofurthermore allow us to betterdeterminethe "ambivalent" ple-this time with respect to the democratichorizon. For if the empty signifier of the "people"had assumed its centralitybecause any retreatto more ancient notions of the people was cut off, given the irreversiblenatureof the democraticrevolution, a certain of the King and price had to be paid for it. Accordingto Lefort,afterthe disincorporation the emptying of the place of power, sovereigntycould no longer resortto a transcendent instance of legitimation.The very instance of sovereignty did not disappear,though; it was filled out by the name of the people (this is what "sovereigntyof the people" is all about). Yet since the link to a transcendentplace of legitimation was severed without remedy, nobody who will take up the role of the sovereign will ever reach, after the democraticrevolution, an ultimate legitimatoryground. It follows that the people will be constitutivelysplit: on the one hand, the people have to take up the classical function of sovereignty,and on the other hand this function will be more than precarious,since they cannot resort to any transcendentground of legitimation.The people as sovereign necessarily remainabsent in democracyand still have to assume some sort of sovereign
7. This would explain, by the way, why antipolitical resentmentoften goes together with an antidemocraticideology.

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presence. Herein the ontic or historical reason for the vague and ambivalentappearance of the people and of populism can be found. Populism, in other words, presupposesthe democraticrevolutionas a historicalevent by which the name of the people assumedthe functionof a sovereigntywithout sovereign.

Can the HeterogeneousBe Named? So the empty signifierof the people managedto play the role of a nodalpoint with respect to all other political signifiers because it has expanded historically,to employ Laclau's terminology,from the "myth"of the democraticrevolutioninto the "imaginaryhorizon" Laclauianhegemony theory of politics as such [New Reflections63-67]. To rearticulate with Lefort'stheoryof the democraticrevolution -despite some of Laclau'sreservations vis-ia-visthe latter-helps to understandwhy, after the democraticrevolution, there is no politics that would not be attachedto the name of the people. This doesn't mean, of course, thatthe signifierof "thepeople"will literallybe presentin all political discourse. Yet it implies that political action will necessarily have to take place in the name of the people--no matterwhat particularsignifier comes to be attachedto this action. Politics afterthe democraticrevolutionwill be enacted in the name of a sovereign who will and must remain absent in the last instance. The lonely hour of sovereignty never occurs, that are always less than sovereign. except in the actions of a representative The story,however, does not end here, as Laclau is well aware. It was Georges Bataille who had pointedout the dual natureof sovereignty:sovereignis not only s/he who is in possession of the power of domination("imperative sovereignty"),but the notion of sovereigntyalso refersto the absolutelyuseless, incalculable,excessive, and incommensurable[see "PsychologicalStructure"]. This radicalotherto the homogenizingforces of social ordernow emerges, in our argument,as a necessary Doppelgdngerof the people as subject of sovereignty.Laclau follows Bataille in calling the "otherside" of the hoThe heterogeneous,in Laclau'sdefinition, mogeneousorderof differencesheterogeneity. is something that cannot be integratedin the hegemonic play between difference and equivalence. It does not belong to the homogenous order of differences, because then it could obviously not be heterogeneous;nor does it belong to the orderof antagonistic equivalence,for then it would have acquireda name and would again belong to the order of signification.Social heterogeneityis a kindof outsidethat"presupposes exterioritynot but to the space of representation as just to something within a space of representation, such" [PR 140]. It follows that"thefield of representation is a brokenand murkymirror, constantly interrupted by a heterogeneous 'Real' which it cannot symbolically master"

[141].
A way to graspthis instanceof social heterogeneityas somethingthatdoes not have access to the space of representation would be to thinkof it not as antagonisticnegativity (for example, the "enemy of the people" who serves as "negative reverse of a popular identity" [139]), but as a pure remainderor leftover which does not contributeto the as shapeof a given identity.(Laclaurefersto the Lacanianexample of the caputmortuum the pure abject which remainsin the tube after a chemical experiment.)On these premises, it appearsto me that the key question from the perspectiveof a political theory of namingwould be how somethingthatfalls outside any logic of representation, something that cannot representthe subjectof the political for the other signifiers,can nevertheless be named. To be sure, the question is not how the category of heterogeneity,as what resists symbolization,can be conceptualizedtheoretically-from Kant to Lacanone can find a variety of theoreticalapproaches.Rather,the question imposes itself how what is heterogeneouscan assume a name politically. Is there a politics of those who have no name, a politics in the name of namelessness?

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Laclau seems to arguethat there is somethingwithina given name--the materiality of the signifier-which is heterogeneousvis-?a-vis that name and the naming process in general. To take the centralcase of the people: "The 'people' will always be something more than the pureopposite of power.There is a Real of the 'people' which resists symbolic integration"[PR 152]. One way of readingthis claim would be along the lines of the traditionaldifference between the populus (all citizens) and the plebs (the underprivileged). GiorgioAgamben [Means withoutEnd] has observed--in comparablefashion-that in the history of political thoughtwhat we call people is not a unified subject but somethingthatoscillates between the two opposite poles of the integralpolitical body of the People (Popolo) and the excluded rest (popolo, definedby Agambenalso as one of the formsof barelife). Once more, we encountera constitutivesplit at the very core of the people. The people is what cannotbe includedin the whole of which it is part,and cannot be part of the whole in which it is included. This internalsplitting of the people found itself legally institutedin the distinctionbetween populus andplebs in ancient Rome, or betweenpopolo minutoandpopolo grasso in medieval times. Likewise, for JacquesRancibre, "thepeople are always more or less than the people" [Disagreement10].8There is politics because there is a partof those who have no partin the whole of a well-ordered community. Ranciere'sapproachis informativebecause he at one point exemplifies his case with a fable of self-naming. His source is a version of Livy's account of the secession of the writerPierre-Simon plebeians on Aventine Hill retold by the Frenchnineteenth-century Ballanche.In this version of the story the plebeians on the Aventineconstructeda counthe patriciansthrougha process of self-naming: teridentity vis-.-vis [T]hey give themselvesrepresentatives by rebaptizingthem.In a word,they conduct themselves like beings with names. Throughtransgression,theyfind that they too,just like speakingbeings, are endowedwith speech thatdoes not simply express want, suffering,or rage, but intelligence. Theywrite, Ballanche tells us, of speaking "a name in the sky": a place in the symbolicorderof the community beings, in a communitythat does not yet have any effectivepower in the city of Rome. [.. ..] [T]he plebeians have actually violated the order of the city. They have given themselvesnames. [Disagreement24-25] Those who are not consideredspeakingbeings by the homogeneous order("Whoeveris nameless cannot speak" [23]), will be heard only when writing "a name in the sky" of the symbolic order.9 Thereby,politics is presentedas a process that evidently resembles the Laclauianprocess of hegemony. To translateRanciere's example into "Laclauese": what the plebeians do is to constructan antagonismvis-a-vis the patricians,thus assum8. Rancibre'sgeneral approach is explicitly discussed and-sympathetically-criticized by Laclau [PR 244-49]. 9. An obvious analogy can be observed between Ranciere'spoint and Spivak's famous question: Can the subalternspeak? It would be interestingto learn how, in Laclau's view, the category of heterogeneityrelates to Gramsci'snotion of the "subaltern,"as it is in use today in postcolonial and subalternstudies.As Spivakclaims, the "colonizedsubalternsubjectis irretrievably heterogeneous" [270], and the notion of the "subaltern"should be reservedtoday "forthe sheer heterogeneity of decolonizedspace" [310]. Spivakeven speaks out clearlyfor-in our terms-a hegemonic effortat assuminga name or becominginscribedinto the realmof the nameable,as thereis nothing a linkof communicationis estabdesirable in being relegatedto the realmof namelessness: "When the lished between a memberof subalterngroups and the circuits of citizenshipor institutionality, subalternhas been insertedinto the long road to hegemony.Unless we want to be romanticpurists or primitivists about 'preservingsubalternity'-a contradiction in terms-this is absolute to be desired" [310].

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ing a name (or a chain of names) which serves as the empty signifierthat holds together plebeian identity.But where do we find the heterogeneousin this example? It is crucial to understand that the heterogeneous,in its most radicalaspect, is not identical with the that seeks to fill out the space of an absentuniversality. When Laclau,on his particularity we the formerwith the differentiates between and must not confuse plebs populus, part, a the of is of For Laclau, plebs who claims to category heterogeneity. "people" populism be the only legitimatepopulus, since populism "requiresthe dichotomic division of society into two camps--one presentingitself as a partwhich claims to be the whole" [PR 83]. But the heterogeneousis that which falls outside this very game, which is not part of the dialectics between differenceand equivalence,between the plebs and the populus. The heterogeneousis not, in Rancibrian terms, a partof those who have no part in the whole; it is not even a part (withoutbeing the negationof a part),because the term"part" makes sense only in relationto other partsor to a whole. The heterogeneous,in its most radical aspect, escapes any relationbetween part, no-part,and whole. Laclau gives the in Marxianthought.Marx differentiexample of the unpoliticizableLumpenproletariat ates between proletariat--theplebs who aspiresto be the populus--and "thelumpenproletariat" [144], a pureoutsidernot involved in the productionprocess and thus expelled from the field of history and class struggle.A similar example can be found in Hegel's notion of the "peoples without history,"that is, of those non-Europeanswho stand, in Hegel's eyes, outside the realmof historicityeo ipso.

The Shadow of a Name In these examples of the Lumpenproletariat and the "peoples without history" we ena counteran obvious problem.What is the status of these names? Is Lumpenproletariat name for the heterogeneous?If yes, this name- by virtueof being a name- would have to be the resultof a political process of naming,an assumptionexcluded from the outset (since in this case it would not be a name for the heterogeneousbut for a particularity the Lumpenproletariat would already representingthe subject for other particularities: be the Proletariat).On the other hand,however, it cannot be a concept either,for then it would alreadybe inscribedinto a symbolic orderof differencesas just anotherdifference (and not as the heterogeneous).It seems thatwe have discoveredin the signifierLumpena signifieror "name"thatis neithera proletariat a thirdand truly impossible "category," name nor a concept, as it is located both beyond the realm of equivalence and the realm of difference. What makes the Lumpenproletariat an impossible or paradoxicalsignifieris the fact that every signifier,by definition,emerges from the interplaybetween equivalence and difference.Yet in this case, access to the field of significationas such seems to be barred. Are we touching here on what Laclau refers to as the materialityof the signifier,on that withina name or namingprocess which resists symbolic integration? If this was the case, a signifier like Lumpenproletariat would not be a name but the necessary by-product of naming, the leftover producedwith necessity by any process of hegemonization.We can thus define the heterogenousas that which cannot be named directly within a given hegemonic constellation.The heterogeneoushas no name of its own; it is the shadow of a name. For whenevera name, in a process of hegemonic conflict, is "writtenin the sky," this name-like a cloud-will cast a shadow upon some area. Every name will necessarily producesomethingof the orderof a blind spot. Hence, from the perspectiveof the subject of naming, the shadow of the subject's name cannot but be devoid of meaning, since a signifier in its pure materiality,separatedfrom every signified, amountsto nothing more thannoise. At best, the heterogeneouscould be experiencedas a nuisance,as a

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disturbanceand dislocation of the naming process.'0One is temptedto explain this fact with what would be a typically Luhmannian,systems-theoreticalformula:one cannot name what one cannot name. Withinour own political struggle, within our own naming process, we cannot see and cannot name what, by definition,cannot be seen and cannot be named:our blind spot, the obverse side of our own name. To say, however, that the heterogeneouscannot be named directly within a given hegemonic constellationdoes not preclude the possibility of signifying it from without that situation.Only by steppingout of, for instance, the Marxianframeworkcan we deas the role of the heterogeneouswith respect termine the role of the Lumpenproletariat We have to step outside the shadow cast by to the hegemonic struggleof the proletariat. our own name, but this would force us to give up on our name. It would mean to enter a process of un-naming.How can such a process be imagined?Wouldwe have to abandon of the very dimension of naming, and hence equivaour name? But such abandonment lence, would be conceivable only if we were preparedto leave the realmof the political altogether.If we are not, then perhapsthe only political form of un-namingwill be to assume more thana single name. For the only way to glimpse the shadowof our own name might be to look at it from the perspectiveof somebody else's name.Assuming the name of the other might be the very preconditionfor namingthe shadow of heterogeneitycast by our name. I would claim thatthis is not only the very ontological condition of everything that goes "underthe name"of solidarity.I also suppose that, eventually, the name horizon of democracy-will of the people-as the nodal point within the unsurpassable be affected, since what such a strategyof un-namingwould imply is the pluralizationof names, the pluri-perspectivity (in an Arendtiansense) of the sphereof politics, where we will encounternot a single name of "thepeople" but a pluralityof names. This plurality, but a pluralitywhose very condition though, is not anothervariantof liberal"pluralism," of possibility lies in the fact thatthe nameof the people is neverone, thatit is always split, and neverthelessremainsthe single unsurpassable horizon of democraticpolitics.

WORKS CITED Agamben,Giorgio. Means withoutEnd: Notes on Politics. Minneapolis:U of Minnesota P, 2000. Arendt, Hannah.Lectureson Kant'sPolitical Philosophy. Ed. Ronald Beiner. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982. Bataille, Georges. "The Psychological Structureof Fascism." The Bataille Reader.Ed. Fred Botting and Scott Wilson. Oxford:Blackwell, 2000. Hardt,Michael, andAntonioNegri. Multitude:Warand Democracyin the Age of Empire. New York:Penguin,2004. und Differenz.Stuttgart: Neske, 1957. Heidegger,Martin.Identitdit MA: Saul. and Necessity. Cambridge, CambridgeUP, 1980. Naming Kripke, New the Revolution Time.London:Verso, 1990. Ernesto. on Our Laclau, Reflections of . Politics and Ideology in MarxistTheory:Capitalism,Fascism, Populism.London: Verso, 1977. . "WhyDo Empty SignifiersMatterto Politics?"Emancipation(s).London:Verso, 1996. 36-46. Laclau, Ernesto,and ChantalMouffe. Hegemonyand Socialist Strategy.London:Verso, 1985.

moreexplicitly on the one wouldhavewishedthatLaclauhad elaborated 10. Nevertheless, in to the as in statusof his category relation dislocation category of developed of heterogeneity New Reflections.

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Lefort,Claude. Democracyand Political Theory.Minneapolis:U of MinnesotaP, 1988. The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy,Democracy, Totalitarian--. ism. Cambridge,MA: MIT P, 1986. Oliver.Post-foundationalPolitical Thought:Political Differencein Nancy,LeMarchart, and Laclau. Edinburgh: Badiou, UP, 2007 (forthcoming). fort, Edinburgh une de Antonio. "Pour Negri, d6finitionontologique la multitude."Multitudes9 (MayJune 2002): 36-48. Rancibre,Jacques.Disagreement:Politics and Philosophy.Minneapolis:U of Minnesota P, 1999. A Critiqueof Postcolonial Reason: Toward a Historyof the Spivak,GayatriChakravorty. Present. Cambridge,MA: Harvard UP, 1999. Vanishing Stavrakakis,Yannis. "Antinomiesof Formalism:Laclau's Theory of Populism and the Lessons from Religious Populism in Greece."Journal of Political Ideologies 9(3) (Oct. 2004): 253-67. Virno, Paolo. A Grammarof the Multitude.New York:Semiotext(e), 2004. Zifek, Slavoj. The SublimeObjectof Ideology. London:Verso, 1989.

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