The Political Ontology of Peronism

Every theory that purports to explain a general field of phenomena will nevertheless pass through a particular historical experience. In the case of Ernesto Laclau's political ontology, it is the Argentinian experience of Peronism which forms the background against which Laclau's whole thinking of the political, including his theorisation of antagonism and of populism, emerged. As an activist of the Argentinian Socialist Party and the Peronist student movement, and later as a member of the political leadership of the Socialist Party of the National Left, Laclau was deeply involved in the Peronist struggle. Therefore, it should not come as surprise that with his hugely influential book On Populist Reason, published in 2005, Laclau took up theoretically the question of populism, thus returning full circle, after nearly thirty years, to his first book-length publication Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (Laclau 1977) with which he had introduced himself as one of the foremost theorists of populism. Yet, On Populist Reason is not simply a book on populism if by the latter we understand a more or less marginal political phenomenon; rather, the logic of populism, unravelled by Laclau, holds the key to any correct understanding of politics as such. The Kantian allusion of his title, ‘On Populist Reason’, seems to be hinting at the wider theoretical implications of populism. In fact, it can be assumed, given the hidden Kantianism of his title, that what Laclau sets out to develop is not simply an empirical account of current or historical populist movements, but a quasi-transcendental inquiry into the conditions of possibility of populism and, as he holds in his first sentence, of ‘the nature and logics of the formation of collective identities’ at large (PR 9). For this reason, Laclau's book on populism can be expected to provide important insights for the study not only of populism, but of politics in general, particularly of protest politics. Seen from this perspective, On Populist Reason has to be read as a contribution to a political and cultural theory of mobilisation, not only to the study of populism in the narrow sense.