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Populism Roundup
For those who missed it, or who are interested in following along and thinking about it, here's a list of contributions to the recent blogversation on populism:
- Bat @ Lenin's Tomb: Down with the Ten Capitalist Ministers; Meaders @ Lenin's Tomb: The People's Populism
- Jon (Posthegemonic Musings): anti-politics; substitution
- Le Colonel Chabert: Hydra, Agency is Eeeevil, Populism and the Industry
- Infinite Thought: Is the Politics of Truth Still Thinkable?
- K-Punk: Left Hyperstition 1: The Fictions of Capital; Left Hyperstition 2: Be Unrealistic, Change What's Possible; The Beast that Won't Die
- Kenneth Rufo (Me): Sitting inside an empty airport; On Populist Reason; Gather Ye Plebs
- Jared Woodard: Populists or Proletarians: Laclau, Zizek and the Problem of Articulation
- archive: s0metim3s: Populism Redux
- American Stranger: Fiction vs. Reality Part One; Part Two
- Hold That Thought: Whose Afraid of Populism
If I'm missing any, please leave the links in comments and I'll elevate them to the main post.
By kenrufo | December 8, 2005 in Politics, Symposia | Permalink
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» Populism redux from archive : s0metim3s
To Kenneth Rufos roundup of recent debates on populism over at Long Sunday, Ill add the fragment on Jean-Luc Nancy on the people, which comes from the recent essay on democracy, more of which is here, updated with an additi... [Read More]
Tracked on Dec 8, 2005 10:29:08 PM
Comments
Ken, thank you for listing the various sites. I have been following the discussion at Le Colonel (and participating a bit). It seems rather odd that a construct like "populism" would take on such a central concern for some theorists at this particular moment.
Posted by: Alain | Dec 8, 2005 9:35:49 AM
Yeah, on the one hand, I suspect it's just an interesting confluence of events - Laclau's new book, the Politics of Truth conference, Jon's ruminations on posthegemony - and we just ended up with a random discussion point. On the other hand, as I hope to show in a larger project to be taken up more fully next year, I think that a lot of this interest in populism, at least at the level of invention, if not of motive, is due to an increasing awareness of a renewal or mutation of fascism, and the need to theorize an alternative that forces populism (which is endemic to all liberal democracies or near liberal democracies) more towards a sort of radical democratic project and away from a more fascist one.
Posted by: Kenneth Rufo | Dec 8, 2005 9:46:34 AM
You missed Meaders at the Tomb:
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2005/12/peoples-populism.html
Posted by: David | Dec 8, 2005 11:09:22 AM
David, thank you for the additional link. The colonel is in rare form during the comment thread to this post. She raises a very difficult issue: what is the significant difference between what we might call "manufactured/spectral populism" and the "real thing?" I realize I am over simplyfing but I think this distinction lies at the core of the disagreement the Colonel is having with some of the other folks. Her/His position, which I share, is that there are no current political phenomena that can be described as populist, at least in terms of the historical understanding of populism.
But I am open to being convinced otherwise.
Posted by: Alain | Dec 8, 2005 12:43:38 PM
And there is a new one from the colonel:
http://lecolonelchabert.blogspot.com/2005/12/populism-industry.html
Posted by: David | Dec 8, 2005 12:58:16 PM
Jon wrote a series of essays on Laclau's On Populist Reason and on his book-in-the-works. In chronological order:
Populism (Laclau I)
Discourse (Panizza)
Power (Laclau II)
Obselence
Sovereignty (more Laclau)
Anti-Politics
Anti-Politics II
He also has a longer essay on Panizza and Laclau, but, obviously, it's his decision as to whether or not it should circulate in the world of blogs.
Posted by: Craig | Dec 8, 2005 2:12:56 PM
Well, I have a review of both Panizza's book and Laclau's. I'm happy to send the draft to anyone who's interested.
Posted by: Jon | Dec 8, 2005 8:52:07 PM
Alain, I don't think it's quite so odd that populism would become a pivot of various arguments at the present. It has I think a lot to do with the predicament of democracy, the bond and relation between demos (the people) and kratos (the state).
I tried to backtrack a posting, but not sure if it worked. In any case: http://archive.blogsome.com/2005/12/09/populism-redux/
Posted by: s0metim3s | Dec 8, 2005 11:09:16 PM
sOmetime3s, thank you. I will check it out.
Posted by: Alain | Dec 9, 2005 10:04:51 AM
Looking at these posts on populism, I'm struck by the absense of what is, to me, the great populist intervention of the moment -- the refusal of the American population to enlist for the Iraqi war. There may well be lessons here on the populist strategy of invisibility -- of squeezing the governing class by discrete refusals. Not that I am claiming this is always the most winning of strategies -- the discrete refusal of more and more urban juries to convict drug dealers and users, that most pernicious of the security state's managed moral panics, still hasn't stemmed the flow into the prisons. I suppose that the question is how a discrete refusal can be converted to an overt movement. It certainly, at the present time, has to operate outside of the political parties. And that is the hard part.
Posted by: roger | Dec 9, 2005 1:33:28 PM
My seminar paper on the topic: Populists or Proletarians
Posted by: Jared Woodard | Dec 9, 2005 6:37:31 PM
Roger,
how do you arrive at the figure of "the American population" given that not everyone in the USA is refusing conscription. And so, it seems a little peculiar to render them - irrespective of their politics - as no longer part of "the American population".
On the other hand, why would it not make just as much if not more sense - given you note the extent to which such refusals do not operate within the formal political system - to suggest that such refusals are an indication that a number of people in the US are no longer quite so interpellated by the unitary and mystical hailing of 'Mah fellow Americans'?
That they are, to put it another way, taking up residence in the House of UnAmerican Activities.
Posted by: s0metim3s | Dec 9, 2005 7:55:21 PM
s0metim3s, you are right to point out that the "American population" is more than a bit optimistic. It is, however, the case that the kind of mobilization states depend upon to make war has failed in the U.S., and that failure has widening consequences.
I disagree, however, that the refusal to enlist has to do with taking up residence in the house of Unamerican activities. On the contrary, I think that it is about disputing the claim to America -- who owns it, who runs it, what it is for. In the same way that a jury of teachers and janitors and clerks that refuses to give out maximum sentences to send people into the bowels of the vast American prison system aren't operating as Un-Americans, but precisely as Americans who have had enough.
Like plants under a concrete sidewalk, the identity claim of these people is an original growth that is not at all about resistance -- the resistance is thrust upon them by circumstances that usually crush them. Unfortunately, there is an academic tendency to take those circumstances and project it upon the political activity of everyday life, where it becomes "resistance" or "opposition." That risks, to my mind, the alienation of everyday political activity -- thrust into unrecognizable categories, that activity retracts.
Posted by: | Dec 10, 2005 9:59:30 AM
Roger, it's not clear to me that the organisation of war has failed. It seems that it's changing its form, which would suggest less a case for optimism than for widening the lens beyond the US.
On this, see John Barker's "Armchair Spartans", or even better Achille Mbembe's "Necropolitics", if you have access to MUSE. If not, an excerpt here.
And, just to clarify, I'm neither an academic nor do I live in the US, so the rhetoricities of 'ivory tower' versus 'everday life' doesn't quite explain to me why the identity of American is somehow less political, intellectual or historical than any other. If I were an academic, those rhetorics might make me anxious. But it just doesn't make much sense to me as an explanation.
Posted by: s0metim3s | Dec 10, 2005 8:35:10 PM
s0metim3s -- the question of enlistment in the U.S. army is one thing, the question of all the factors at play in the Iraq war is another. If you want a populist movment and an international one that interlock, I don't see anything like that on the horizon. I'm not sure if that kind of scale is possible. I think the question is two-fold: on the one hand, what are populist movements and how do we spot them? And on the other hand, how can one create organized, sustainable politics out of populist movements? I'm afraid that the first question is bypassed all too quickly -- as if populist movements are top down things. My idea, however, is that you have to go out and look for them if you want to theorize about them, and that sometimes you won't see them if you don't look at various gaps and incoherencies in the socius. My idea, I guess, is that progressives have a lot to learn from the X files. Hmm. Well, that's my idea, dammit, and I'm stickin' to it!
Posted by: roger | Dec 11, 2005 4:22:51 PM
One more contribution from me on this debate:
Umm, enjoy.
Posted by: Kenneth Rufo | Dec 14, 2005 7:31:40 AM
Kenneth, I read your post and found it very sensible ... maybe two sensible. I agree that populisms can tend towards the right or the left. Myself, as a liberal, I'm interested in the populism that tends towards the left, and whether that kind of movement holds lessons about achieving liberal kinds of political goals -- for instance, creating a national health service in the U.S.A. The theoretic embrace of all populisms is probably too broad, but the dismissal of populism per se because it is a various thing seems pretty shortsighted. I'd say that shortsightedness was on display, recently, when the PS elite made the decision that the Socialist position required voting for a European constitution that enshrined the most obnoxious neo-classical economic theory. The revolt against that position did not come from a countering elite, but from the grassroots. Who were also concerned with the expansion of EU, since that expansion, disguised as a sort of liberal ecumenism, really diluted the pressure to maintain social democracy by revoking the positive, small scale of the nation ... for certain neoliberal purposes.
Posted by: roger | Dec 15, 2005 12:01:57 PM
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