Populism, Crisis Representation and the Agency of Minorities: The Political Perspective of Social Identification

The paper will deal with the puzzle of minorities declaring their support for populist candidates and self-identifying with their movements, which from the perspective of post-positivist scientists is explained away as behavioral error, or „falling victim to populist deception“, often subsumed in the notion of „voting against one´s interest“. Scientists taking an (impossible) position of knowledge of „right“ decisions, and purveyor of ‚what is best‘ for analytical subjects is widely proliferating in the humanities not only in sociology or political science. That this trope is even more pretentious and problematic will be demonstrated in this paper by relating it to the reformulation of populism as a new analytical/practical discourse of post-foundationalist thought as initiated by Ernesto Laclau´s reading of Derrida, Lacan and Althusser. The thesis is that if Laclau´s theory of populism as political logic (as a way to construct ‚social actors‘ as participatory, precarious assemblages of heterogeneous ideological positions under a collective imaginary, i.e. of „we“ „the people“) entails a novel way to think/practice the social bond from a common negativity, then grievances, unfulfilled social demands and antagonisms become the ‚groundless ground‘ on which these formations manifest – we can thus avoid ‚fundamentalist‘ simplifications, i.e. of ‚closed‘ identities, interests. The advantage to (post)positivist or legalistic theories like that of C. Mudde or M. Uysal will be discussed to tease out consequences of this ontological shift of terrain in which we think social formations formalistically as open set (social articulations) necessitating an „empty set“, - in Laclau ´s theory represented by „empty signifiers“ - which achieves affective investments not by squaring fundamental, inherent, positivist differences, but negotiating social identification(s) under common „threats“ of oppression, represented by the leader. As case-example we analyze clashes between „Trump“ and „the FBI“ becoming framed as „attack on the constitution“ and „the country“ - invoking signifiers tendentially emptied of their differential, semantic meaning which come to signify an amorphous, impossible totality, that exists only as it is under threat. That way „Trump“ can for many minorities of African-American, Latin-American descent represent not a contingent elitist millionaire from Queens, but stand in for their social grievances, demands, heterogeneity and struggles. Any attempt to diminish his standing, authenticity, or authority through means of searches, court-indictments, impeachments etc. agitates his base as he is perceived among others as alter ego standing in for all those who are oppressed and further, faces oppression as such – giving a quasi-universal value to contingent and particular positions, over-determining and subverting them. As Laclau phrases it: „representation is a two-way street“(2005). I claim that with Laclau´s re-formulation of populism we can avoid falling into the essentialist trap of disavowing the political dimension of any possible foundations of social mobilization and problematize how „minority“ positions become intertwined in a dialectic with „underdog“ leaders.