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 Schools and Departments > School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy > Psychosocial Studies Divisions > Birkbeck Schools and Departments > School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy > Psychosocial Studies |
| Depositing User: | Administrator |
| Date Deposited: | 04 Jul 2019 15:02 |
| Last Modified: | 21 Jul 2020 20:58 |
| URI: | http://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/28009 |
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