Populism as a fantasmatic rupture in the post-political order: integrating Laclau with Glynos and Stavrakakis

ABSTRACT

The recent challenges of populist movements to the ‘post-democratic horizon’ in Greece and elsewhere have highlighted its possibilities as a political force able to mount a challenge to the technocratic logics of the neoliberal consensus. The theoretical perspective of Ernesto Laclau, which focuses on the rhetorical act of naming ‘the people’ and extrinsic representative form over intrinsic content, thus becomes increasingly valuable to explore such possibilities and to account for the current ubiquity of populist articulations both here in New Zealand and further afield. However, the need to clarify and iron out any inconsistencies in Laclau’s approach also increases, and the main task of this article is to raise the consideration of how it could be supplemented by, and articulated with, the Lacanian psychoanalytic concepts of fantasy and jouissance. Analysis of a selection of John Key’s populist articulations in the New Zealand media, and photographs from Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) protests, reveal that both forms of populist articulation, while constructing very different visions of ‘the people’, hinge on the fantasmatic representation of an other; an antagonistic power who steals our enjoyment. However, I conclude that a normative assessment of populist articulations is both possible and necessary.     

The metastases of winning: Svenska Spel advertisements through the lens of a Žižeko–Lacanian critique of ideology

In a time when the privileged market position of Svenska Spel is under intense scrutiny by EU officials and pro‐market ideologists, this study provides a critical reading of the advertisement material issued by this Swedish state‐run gambling operation. Drawing on a ?i?eko–Lacanian critique of ideology, the essay identifies and theorizes different kinds of enjoyment promoted in a number of TV advertisement campaigns issued by the company. By taking recourse to the Lacanian notion of jouissance, the study throws light on the radical ambiguity that resides in the gambling win – an ambiguity which manifests itself in the win being pictured as both pleasurable and painful. Moreover, the essay suggests that Svenska Spel entirely excludes the enjoyment derived from the gambling experience as such from its advertisement material, possibly as a consequence of the threat that the promotion of such enjoyment would pose to the company’s legitimacy.