What is (not) populist in “populist reason”? Empty signifiers, boundaries, and the specificity of populist logic

Abstract

Laclau establishes an identity between populism and politics; doing that, he maintains that populism is the only proper political logic. Criticisms of this idea have been well founded; however, there has been no substantial progress regarding the question that emerges as soon as one assumes that populism is only one among many other political logics: what is its ontological specificity? In this regard, I propose to establish a precise meaning for the concept of “preeminence of equivalence” postulated by Laclau as a distinctive feature of populism. To do that, I introduce the idea of “double frontier”. After pointing out that this feature, although capturing populist specificity, does not transcend the ontic level, I critically address the works of Gerardo Aboy Carlés and Sebastián Barros in this regard, showing that despite their valuable contributions, their approaches do not manage to resolve, at least not completely, this question. I then present my proposal that, based on some of Laclau’s statements and supported by the basic principles of his political ontology, aims to demonstrate the role played by empty signifiers in the ontological specificity of all political logic, including populist logic.