The influence of Freudian psychoanalytic theory on Laclau’s Populist Reason
In a context where affects play a central role in the construction of political projects, Ernesto Laclau’s La Razón Populista offers a valuable perspective for understanding how affect is the mobilizing force within political discourse. Laclau develops the concept of hegemony as a process of discurs...
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| Formato: | Artículo revista |
| Lenguaje: | Español |
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Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Humanidades. Instituto de Filosofía
2025
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| Acceso en línea: | https://revistas.unne.edu.ar/index.php/ach/article/view/8602 |
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| Sumario: | In a context where affects play a central role in the construction of political projects, Ernesto Laclau’s La Razón Populista offers a valuable perspective for understanding how affect is the mobilizing force within political discourse. Laclau develops the concept of hegemony as a process of discursive equivalences that culminates in the constitution of popular identities. This article aims to analyze the concepts that Laclau draws from psychoanalytic theory and to explain how he uses his categories to construct a logic around the phenomenon of populism. It is necessary, then, to clarify the links established between the two disciplines in order to reveal that we are not dealing with a casual conjunction of two angles that at first glance appear to be casual or external homologies. These issues will be addressed based on the incorporation of Freud’s work Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, in order to problematize how discursive and hegemonic formations inherently possess an affective component that plays a fundamental role within Laclau’s scheme. Develing into the proposed analysis, a movement emerges that transitions from the initial denigration of the masses, discussed in chapter 3, toward a vindication of the “irrational” and affective dimension of the hegemonic outcome of the masses’ discursive operations, thus opening the way to the unconscious. This raises the question of how these libidinal ties, which operate in the construction of both the people and its discourse, serveas elements that bridge demands to make them equivalent, ultimately constituting a hegemony. To address this, it is necessary to deepen the notion of affective investment in order to explore the role that affect plays within the political landscape. |
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