Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar and

Robert Hariman

INTRODUCTION

Ernesto Laclau has been an important figure on the academic left since the
publication in 1985 (with Chantal Mouffe) of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy:
Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. The continued development and larger
significance of his work was acknowledged with the publication in 2004 of
Laclau: A Critical Reader. In 2005, Professor Laclau published work that has
ensured his place as a major figure in contemporary political philosophy. On
Populist Reason provides an original, rigorous and elegant theory of the
discursive constitution of political action. The intellectual and political
importance of the work is reflected in its reception: the Spanish translation
is in its third edition, while translations also have appeared in French, Italian
and Slovenian, and are forthcoming in Polish and Japanese.
On Populist Reason advances key concepts and major themes of Laclaus
earlier work, and important criticisms are refuted cogently, but these
accomplishments do not account for the full significance of the work. Laclaus
reformulation of populism places the democratic impulse at the very centre of
politics as such: populism is the political act par excellence . . . the sine qua non
requirements of the political are the constitution of antagonistic frontiers
within the social and the appeal to new subjects of social change (p. 154). The
methodological assumption is equally significant: to explain this constitution of
political identity and action, one must account for the operations of discourse
as they can be explicated by post-structural discourse analysis guided by
semiotics, rhetoric and psychoanalysis. By aligning populism with political
agency and political agency with discursive operations, Laclau is able to
advance a model of democratic change that is both radical and pragmatic, and
that accounts for the relative autonomy of political movements and institutions
without sacrificing recognition of or commitment to social heterogeneity.
The publication of On Populist Reason has been so well received that it is
tempting to read it as a handbook rather than as a basis for continued argument
and reflection. The articles in this special issue represent what might be called a
second generation response to the work. The authors assume that there no
longer is a need to summarize the book as a whole or describe it in terms of
prior frameworks for reception. The task instead is renewed critical
engagement with Laclaus project. The authors raise a number of issues in
democratic theory and discourse analysis, and attention is paid to questions of
antagonism, representation, demand, identification, affect and performativity,
Cultural Studies Vol. 26, Nos. 2
3 March
May 2012, pp. 183
184
ISSN 0950-2386 print/ISSN 1466-4348 online # 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandfonline.com http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2011.636182
184 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

among others. Likewise, Laclaus assumptions about discursive operations are

also highlighted, and questions of structuralism, formalism, differance, trope
and so forth are brought to the fore.
No pretense is made here to be comprehensive, but the range of responses
is yet another indication of how On Populist Reason provides a basis for engaged
and rigorous discussion of politics, culture and communication.

Notes on contributors

Dilip Gaonkar is an associate professor in the programme in Rhetoric and

Public Culture in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern
University. He is director of the Center for Transnational Culture and
executive editor of the journal Public Culture, and director of the Center for
Global Culture and Communication at Northwestern University.

Robert Hariman is a professor in the programme in Rhetoric and Public

Culture in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern
University. His publications include No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public
Culture, and Liberal Democracy, co-authored with John Louis Lucaites (Chicago,
2007), Political Style: The Artistry of Power (Chicago, 1995), three edited
volumes, and numerous book chapters and journal articles in several
disciplines. He is co-author of the blog www.nocaptionneeded.com.
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