Edição 508 | 10 Agosto 2017

The challenge of transforming vibrant politics into an instrument of governance

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David Howarth analyzes how Laclau, through his populism, explores the “primacy of politics” in society without ceasing the plurality to the detriment of representativeness

David Howarth is a professor in the Department of Government and co-director of the Centre for Theoretical Studies at the University of Essex, in the United Kingdom. He works with poststructuralist theories of society and politics, concentrating himself especially on the empirical study of political ideologies and discourses. He is currently working on two book projects: one on the poststructuralist themes of social and political theory – Poststructuralism and After (London: Palgrave) – and another on airport governance in the United Kingdom – The Politics of Sustainable Aviation (Manchester: Manchester University Press).

Check the interview.

IHU On-Line - How can one understand Laclau’s thought starting from his post-marxist political theory based on the materialistic theory of discourse? What are mouffe’s contributions?

David Howarth - Laclau’s theoretical writings were all concerned to develop a Marxist approach to politics and ideology that could avoid the problems of economic determinism and class reductionism. Put simply, he thus seeks to contest and reframe the idea that an economic base, governed by precise economic laws and logics, determines or structures political forms, such as the state and its interventions (e.g. decisions, policies, etc.), as well as the dominant ideas and forms of consciousness in society. He also questions the idea that all forms of human subjectivity – our identities and ability to act – are decisively shaped by our locations in the class structure of societies, where the latter is determined only by the ownership and control of property, as well as differential access to the means of production.

Yet these efforts yielded different phases, with different emphases. Put very simply, his various contributions to the development of Marxist theory can be divided into three basic phases. First, in texts like Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (1977) he endeavoured to elaborate a non-reductionist theory of ideology and politics by engaging with the work of Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser, and other proponents of the Althusserian school, including Étienne Balibar and Nicos Poulantzas. Laclau argues that not all ideological elements have ‘a necessary class belonging’ (Laclau, 1977, p. 159), but that certain appeals and interpellations – e.g. pertaining to the nation, people, race or religion – can be connected to radically different political projects.

Then in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985), which was co-authored with Chantal Mouffe, and New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (1990) he articulated a distinctively post-Marxist theory of hegemony and politics that incorporates different aspects of poststructuralist philosophy (e.g. the writings of Derrida, Foucault, and Lacan). This approach breaks decisively with the residual determinism and essentialism of the Marxist paradigm by elaborating a distinctive conception of discourse and hegemony. Rejecting a purely linguistic or cognitive approach to discourse analysis, Laclau and Mouffe define discourse as an articulatory practice that connects contingent elements – linguistic and non-linguistic, natural and social - into relational systems, in which the identity of the elements is modified as a result of the articulatory practice. A key condition of this approach is that all such elements are contingent and unfixed, so that their meaning and identity is only partially fixed by articulatory practices. Incomplete systems of meaning and practice are the outcomes of such practices. And, finally, in texts like Emancipation(s) (1996) and On Populist Reason (2005) he further refines this post-Marxist approach to political analysis through a deeper engagement with deconstructionist philosophy and Lacan’s interpretation of Freudian psychoanalysis.

Each of these theoretical developments connects in a rough fashion with a series of pressing issues in contemporary politics: the construction and representation of working class and popular demands in an expanded project for socialist transformation; the development of a project for radical democracy as a way of articulating the demands and identities associated with the new social movements; and finally a stress on the creation of new forms of ‘contingent universalism’ in the face of a worrying fragmentation of radical politics caused by the rise of new forms of particularism and identity/difference. But though it is possible to delineate and chart these shifts in Laclau’s approach to the study of ideology and politics, there are also significant continuities. Each of the different phases of in Laclau’s writings is informed by the search for an anti-essentialist and non-reductionist account of social relations and practices. All his interventions thus seek to make greater room for the relatively autonomous role of politics and ideology in explaining social processes. And at each stage of your writings, you explore and sometimes integrate non-Marxist currents of thinking into your approach.

 

IHU On-Line - What is Laclau’s concept of hegemony? how does he construct this concept based on the reading of Antonio Gramsci?

David Howarth - Hegemony in Laclau’s thinking is not just about domination or political leadership, narrowly conceived. Nor is it just about the modern state and struggles for state power, often involving relations of force and coercion alone. Radicalizing the work of Gramsci by deconstructing its residual commitments to a decisive economic nucleus, and the affirmation of a fundamental social class as the principal agent of social change, Laclau speaks rather to the building of broad projects and assemblages that can develop and institute new values and social relations, as well as public policies and forms of governance.

The concept of hegemony thus elucidates the creation and reproduction of social systems by focussing on the way demands, identities and groups are weaved together into projects that are animated by a common discourse. This common discourse is held together by its opposition to a named set of practices, ideas, and policies. Opposition is thus crystallised in signifiers that bind these elements together. “For the many, and not the few!” – Labour’s slogan in the recent UK general election - is a good example of this kind of representation. In technical terms, such slogans function as “empty signifiers”, which result from a process in which one particular demand or sign comes to signify what is universal in the different demands that are linked together. The unity and identity is produced through their opposition to a common other. Empty signifiers highlight the importance of rhetoric, as they invoke the tropes of catachresis and synecdoche, and thus the central role of “naming” – both of the self and the other - as well as the way a “part” can stand for the “whole”.

Yet room is made for degrees of autonomy and respect for difference within such coalitions and assemblages. We have, then, the interacting logics of equivalence and difference. Equivalences between different demands and identities are created by the naming of others - or a singular “Other” - that blocks their attainment. So the values of equality and solidarity are thus affirmed. Yet differences are not completely obliterated in the creation of a more universal project or coalition, for they must be respected and valued. Freedom and pluralism are also thus valued and endorsed.

But there are dangers lurking. Equivalences can dissolve and dissipate once partial victories are achieved. And all victories in this approach are to some degree partial, even if they might be substantial – there is no ultimate emancipation, only a series of emancipations. Differences can easily harden into new forms of hierarchy and social division, once a project attains a degree of power and hegemony. Equivalential demands can be disconnected and absorbed into systems of power, and their radicality thus blunted. In short, the games of equivalence and difference are strategically necessary in a world without fixed rules or sharp parameters, but they are always risky and dangerous.

In the development of his theory, the category of hegemony has been a central device for linking together the different elements and concepts of his approach. Yet there are different formulations and emphases in your writings in this regard. In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, hegemony is a type of practice that links together different demands and identities in the construction of hegemonic projects. This articulatory practice in turn presupposes the incomplete and open character of the social, coupled with the presence of antagonistic forces and the instability of the frontiers which separate them. In this view, it is only the presence of a vast area of floating elements and the possibility of their articulation into opposed formations that makes a hegemonic practice possible. Without equivalence and without frontiers, it is impossible to speak strictly of hegemony. In your more recent writings, the notion of hegemony is closely connected to the functioning of empty signifiers. In On Populist Reason, for instance, hegemony is described as an operation in which ‘one difference … assumes the representation of an incommensurable totality’, so that in the consequent interplay between universality and particularity, where the embodied totality is an impossible object, the hegemonic identity assumes the form of an empty signifier.

 

IHU On-Line - What are the limits and the potential of the concept of populism, according to Laclau, to understand the politics of our time?

 David Howarth - The concepts of discourse and hegemony are the cornerstones of Laclau’s theoretical approach, and the project for radical democracy is Laclau and Mouffe’s alternative to neo-liberalism and unfettered capitalism. But it is populism that is the central substantive focus of his work.

At the outset, it is important to stress that Laclau’s approach to populism differs from rival theories in fundamental respects. In theoretical terms, he rejects eclectic accounts that impute a false unity on populist politics by subsuming wildly diverse movements and practices under its banner. He also challenges approaches that reduce populist politics to irrational and backward impulses, or to pre-given class interests and locations. Populism is not a façade that blocks or distorts working class struggles or nationalist self-assertions as some would maintain.

Instead, building on his theory of discourse and hegemony, Laclau argues that populism exhibits a distinctive mode of articulating political identities and building coalitions. Populist struggles foreground the political dimension in society – the division of society into two camps - and involves the connecting together of demands expressed by those who are marginalised and excluded from the dominant systems and discourses. What is more, charismatic leaders can embody this common opposition by providing points with which people can identify and invest. In this way, popular political identities and collective wills can be forged and activated, and new social relations and practices instituted.

Laclau thus contests the view that populist leaders are always right-wing demagogues, or that populist parties and movements are inherently anti-democratic. On the contrary, he argues that populism is an essential ingredient of modern democratic societies, because it functions to represent the marginalised voice of the underdog in society. This, for example, is precisely what the leaders of Podemos, Syriza and other populist movements have been claiming and trying to do today. For many, they now symbolize the hopes of those who have been excluded and left behind as a result of austerity politics, as well as those who aspire to something new and different.

Laclau’s theoretical strategy helps us to elaborate concepts that can elucidate a range of populist manifestations. On this basis, we can distinguish between various forms and practices, characterizing some as populist and others as not. For example, a populist demagogue who consistently appeals to “the people”, or a political party that makes ambiguous and distorted statements and interventions, but does not establish equivalences between heterogeneous demands does not qualify as populism in this schema.

Yet there are also potential drawbacks, especially when Laclau returns to the empirical phenomena armed with the categories that have been elaborated. Here I contend that there is a productive (if potentially problematic) ambiguity. Populism is both the name and placeholder of politics itself and a type of political discourse or object, which is evident, for example, in his discussion of populist variations, whether it is Peronism in Argentina or the People’s Party in the USA, which can be examined in empirical terms.

In my view, this requires further conceptual clarification of populism and its application. So I thus propose to distinguish between: (1) populism as an ideology or ideological dimension of discourses and social relations; (2) equivalential and institutional forms of politics (which can be distributed along a spectrum bounded by these two regulative ideals); and (3) authoritarian and exclusionary forms of equivalential politics, on the one hand, and popular-democratic and/or radical democratic equivalential politics on the other.

IHU On-Line - Starting from Laclau’s concept, is it possible to construct the idea of a right-wing populism and a left-wing populism? why? how?

David Howarth - Laclau stresses that populism assumes multiple forms. It can easily be cast in a right-wing politics that blames immigrants and other scapegoats for unemployment, economic stagnation, and declining public services. We don’t have to look far to see this kind of politics in Europe at the moment. But his affirmation of a progressive populism also involves a strong commitment to democracy, albeit in a more radical sense than our current neo-liberal settlements. While Laclau emanates from the Marxist tradition, his post-Marxist political theory resolutely supports the values of democracy, equality, and political freedom. Indeed, what he and Chantal Mouffe term the project for “radical and plural democracy” calls for the extension and deepening of values like equality and freedom beyond the formal institutions of parliament and the state.

Both Laclau and Mouffe thus refer to the differences between “right” and “left-wing” populism. But strictly speaking this is not something that can be derived or deduced from their theoretical approach. Indeed, for them, populism is not a political object or entity at all – a movement, party, or ideology, etc. - but a dimension of all social relations. So if we take Laclau at his word, left and right-wing populism is more or less synonymous with left and right wing politics (although this, of course, begs questions about that distinction).

Instead, therefore, in my interpretation of their work it is possible to isolate and extract the idea that populist appeals and forms can be attached to radically different political projects and social movements. Given this, what might be termed “popular-democratic” or “radical democratic” struggles can thus be contrasted with more authoritarian, hierarchical and exclusionary styles of politics. In turn, popular-democratic struggles can be distinguished from other types of politics, including intense single-issue campaigns, as well as more institutional and pragmatic forms of politics, which often involve the striking of agreements and compromises (even though all of these political forms may all share some “family resemblances” to use Wittgenstein’s terminology).

IHU On-Line - What is the importance of the political context (and history) of latin america to understand the concept of populism in Laclau? And what distinguishes the latin american political experience from the one in european countries, such as those that until then made up the european union?

David Howarth -  It is evident from his earliest writings that Laclau’s entire political theory has been strongly shaped by his social and political experiences in Latin America, particularly his native Argentina. In lectures, conversations and his published writings the case of Peronism, especially in the 1950s – the moment, he once said to me, the signifiers began to “float” - occupies something of a paradigmatic status in the elaboration of his thinking. Of course, the contexts vary considerably and Laclau was attentive to these particularities. In some writings, he made a tendential division between “popular democratic” and “radical democratic” struggles, which in some senses reflected the differences between Latin and America, broadly speaking: Latin America marked in many cases by the emergence of authoritarian and clientelistic forms of politics, and Europe by the gradual and uneven development of more liberal democratic institutions and practices. He also showed how different “liberal” demands, such as the struggle for basic human rights in Latin American countries during the 1970s and 1980s, could become popular demands and so part of the popular identity. Finally, Laclau also insists on pluralizing our understanding of modern democratic forms, so that liberal democratic institutions do not – and should not – exhaust our concept and understanding of democracy.

IHU On-Line - How can one understand, from the perspective of Laclau’s populism, the so-called new social movements, such as the ones derived from the arab spring and occupy wall street, among others?

David Howarth - In general, we should note that Laclau’s account of populism is synonymous with his endeavours to understand the logics of collective mobilisation and the construction of popular identities. Indeed, he sometimes connects these aspects together in his understanding of the concept of politics itself. As to the specific cases you mention, they are of course very different mobilizations and interventions, though the wider global context – the rise and consolidation of what might be termed “global neoliberalism” and the geo-political developments associated with this era – does provide some loose connections between them. Laclau did not write much directly on these new events and process, though his students in the Essex School of Discourse Analysis and others have done so. The various instantiations of the Arab Spring, each different, display many of the hallmarks of populism: the weaving together of various demands articulated and directed at (often) corrupt and sclerotic elites and regimes by movements and campaigns, peaceful and sometimes violent. It is also possible to see the occupy movement in these terms, ….

IHU On-Line - From Laclau’s perspective, how can one understand what has been called the return of the right to government in latin american countries, such as Argentina and Brazil, as well as the rise of conservative leaders in Europe and even the election of donald trump in the us?

 David Howarth - As I have noted, Laclau distinguishes between left and right-wing populism, and between insurgent hegemonic projects, which operate through equivalential logics, and more institutional forms of politics, which are marked by the preservation of dominant systems, often exhibiting complex logics of difference in the construction and reproduction of power. The rise of Donald Trump and the success of other right-wing parties in Europe, such as Nigel Farrage’s UKIP party in the UK and Marine Le Pen’s FN in France, can be characterized as variable instantiations of authoritarian and exclusionary styles of populism. Although exhibiting an anti-establishment stance, as well as an equivalential mode of linking different demands – e.g., anti-immigration and anti-EU demands, coupled with calls for greater protectionism of national industries and public services, etc. - their function has been primarily to defend important elements of the status quo, especially the dominant logics of economic growth, as well as a range of vested interests in the state, economy and society as a whole.

Anti-establishment. Fantasmatic narratives.

IHU On-Line - The concept of populism is a way in which Laclau explores the “primacy of politics” in society. but to what extent does his methodology of analysis challenge the model of representative politics? How does he discuss the so-called “crisis of representativeness”? And how does he see the “ideal democracy”?

 David Howarth - These are complex and difficult questions, which raise key issues for radical politics today. In Laclau’s and Mouffe’s writings, they can be approached via the concept of radical democracy, which are themselves rich and protean. But in the limited time and space I have available I am not able to explore them all in detail. Instead, I shall focus on one productive tension that arises in Laclau’s work.

In one line of thinking, Laclau argues that radical democracy denotes a ‘cluster of dimensions’, each of which lacks something, and when taken together do not fit seamlessly. The three conceptions are democracy as a political regime, that is, a universal system of institutional rules (e.g. freedom and equality for all); democracy as a particular form of democratic subjectivity – the constitution of ‘the people’ for example - which Laclau identifies as ‘populist’; and the connection between radical democracy and pluralism, in which the notion of universality is questioned in the name of difference and particularity (Laclau, 2005b, pp. 259-261).

Each of these dimensions is beset with difficulty: the principles and rules of liberal democracy in the formal conception of democracy are too narrow and thin. They are thus compatible with various inequalities in civil society, while also concealing relations of domination and hierarchy in the name of universalism. A purely populist democracy runs the risk of identifying the community with a particular section of it, thus ruling out pluralism and ‘democratic interaction’. And, finally, if radical democracy were to be equated with the simple affirmation of pluralism and difference, then it would deprive the concept of a common symbolic order within which such claims and grievances could be affirmed.

Laclau thus argues that radical democracy needs a political articulation between these three dimensions, rather than a logical mediation between them, or the logic of subsuming two of them under one dominant conception. This leaves a view of democracy and radical democracy as a heterogeneous set of elements that are in tension with one another, thus leaving space for contingent articulations by different actors and forces.

This is one set of remarks about radical democracy. But there is another line of flight, which is more prominent in Laclau’s On Populist Reason. Here he draws a strong link between populism and democracy. This is because ‘democracy is grounded only on the existence of a democratic subject, whose emergence depends on the horizontal articulation between equivalential demands’ (Laclau, 2005a, p. 171 My emphasis). One implication is that the articulation between democracy and liberalism is contingent. This is because, firstly, ‘other contingent articulations are also possible, so that there are forms of democracy outside the liberal symbolic framework (the problem of democracy, seen in its true universality, becomes that of the plurality of frameworks which make the emergence of a “people” possible)’ and, secondly, ‘since the emergence of a “people” is no longer the direct effect of any particular framework, the question of the constitution of a popular subjectivity becomes an integral part of the question of democracy’ (Laclau, 2005a, p. 167).

We have, then, two different emphases, both of which challenge the traditional image and model of representative democracy, incarnated in the key institutions and practices of modern liberal democracies. In both, the more “messy” version of democracy, and in the view that emphasizes the populist dimension above others, the ideal of democracy is rendered more contingent and variable: it cannot be fixed by one form and set of institutions alone.

Finally, it is important to stress that one of the biggest challenges facing new left-leaning populist movements in Europe, United States and Latin America is how to transform themselves from a vibrant politics of protest into an effective, plural and democratic instrument of governance, while still retaining their radical and democratizing edges. Phrased in the words of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, how is it possible for new populist forces to negotiate ‘the difference between what might be called a “strategy of opposition” and a “strategy of construction of a new order”’?  (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, p. 189) How can the myth of a new beginning – the end of austerity and self-defeating debt – be transformed into a new collective social imaginary that can provide a genuine and feasible alternative to the current neo-liberal settlements?

IHU On-Line - In which respects is there proximity and distance between Laclau’s thought in the field of politics and other contemporary thinkers such as Judith Butler, Slavoj žižek and Antonio Negri?

David Howarth - In his writings and academic life, Laclau engaged with many contemporary theorists, including important dialogues with Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek and Antonio Negri. A careful and intense analysis of these conversations would be a fruitful enterprise, not least because they have contributed – both positively and negatively – to the overall development of his thought. However, in the short time we have, it is difficult, if not impossible, to provide a detailed and exhaustive comparative reading of Laclau set alongside Butler, Žižek and Negri, as well as the different theoretical traditions that shape these different bodies of work. Perhaps it is better to bring out the decisive contribution of Laclau’s work in relation to these thinkers. What is utterly distinctive in his approach? Here I would say that it is the radicalization of Gramsci’s work through an engagement with modern and “post-modern” French philosophy and theory broadly understood, especially the work of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan. Such an engagement profited, in turn, by a careful appropriation and articulation of the linguistic models elaborated by Ferdinand Saussure, Louis Hjelmslev, Emil Benveniste, and others in the linguistic and semiotic traditions.

The outcome of this complex articulation was a focus on the “primacy of politics”, where politics was distinguished from the social and the economic, and conceptualized in terms of the contestation of social relations in different sites, and the institution of new norms, values and rules. The primacy of politics thus focusses on the distinctive processes of political activity – contestation and institution - conceding such processes and practices an ontological priority. Politics as an arena or space, such as the state, and the search for causal and structural determinants outside the political – whether it be economic infrastructures or rational action – were thus relegated to a secondary status, even though their consideration is not deemed irrelevant.

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