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Becoming the people: a critique of the populist aesthetics of homogeneity

Palacios, Margarita (2020) Becoming the people: a critique of the populist aesthetics of homogeneity. Theory and Event 23 (3), pp. 787-809. ISSN 1092-311X.

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Abstract

Although Ernesto Laclau argues that heterogeneity is at the core of homogeneity, I argue that his account of heterogeneity ultimately pulverizes it. In his work, heterogeneity either becomes colonized (invisible and disavowed), or it becomes excluded (highly visible, penalized and anxiety provoking). Laclau’s uncritical deployment of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and its modernist epistemological dualism, I argue, lead him to not only theorize heterogeneity as racialized/feminine excess that needs to be excluded for meaning to emerge, but also, to conceptualize populism as the performative homogenizing production of the (phallic) signifier of the “One.” My paper stresses the political and conceptual problems of such a formulation.

Metadata

Item Type: Article
Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Affect, Aesthetics, Feminization, Heterogeneity, Laclau, Populism, Racialization
School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences
Research Centres and Institutes: Psychosocial Research, Centre for
Depositing User: Administrator
Date Deposited: 04 Jul 2019 15:02
Last Modified: 26 Jul 2025 04:18
URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/28009

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