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For [[Laclau]], in a nice case of [[self]]-reference, the very [[logic]] of [[hegemony|hegemonic]] articulation applies also to the [[conceptual]] opposition between [[populism]] and [[politics]]: "populism" is the [[Lacan]]ian <i>[[objet a]]</i> of [[politics]], the particular [[figure]] which stands for the [[universal]] [[dimension]] of the [[political]], which is why it is "the royal road" to [[understanding]] the political. [[Hegel]] provided a term for this overlapping of the [[universal]] with part of its own [[particular]] content: "[[oppositional determination]] /<i>gegensaetzliche Bestimmung</i>/" as the point at which the [[universal]] [[genus]] encounters itself among its [[particular]] [[species]]. [[Populism]] is not a specific [[political]] [[movement]], but the political at its purest: the "inflection" of the social [[space]] that can [[affect]] any political content. Its elements are purely [[formal]], "[[transcendental]]," not [[ontic]]: populism occurs when a series of particular "[[democracy|democratic]]" [[demands]] (for better [[social security]], [[health services]], lower taxes, against [[war]], etc.etc.) is enchained in a series of [[equivalences]], and this enchainment produces "[[people]]" as the [[universal political subject]]. What characterizes populism is not the [[ontic]] content of these [[demands]], but the mere formal fact that, through their enchainment, "people" emerges as a political subject, and all different particular struggles and [[antagonism]]s appears as parts of a [[global]] [[antagonism|antagonistic]] [[struggle]] between "[[us]]" ([[people]]) and "[[them]]." Again, the content of "us" and "them" is not prescribed in advance but, precisely, the stake of the struggle for [[hegemony]]: even [[ideology|ideological]] elements like brutal [[racism]] and [[anti-Semitism]] can be enchained in a populist series of [[equivalences]], in the way "them" is constructed.
It is clear now why [[Laclau]] prefers [[populism]] to [[class struggle]]: populism provides a neutral "[[transcendental]]" [[matrix]] of an open struggle whose content and stakes are themselves defined by the [[contigency|contingent]] struggle for [[hegemony]], while "[[Class Struggle|class struggle]]" presupposes a [[particular]] social group (the [[working class]]) as a privileged [[political agent]]; this privilege is not itself the outcome of hegemonic struggle, but grounded in the "[[objective social position]]" of this group - the [[ideology|ideologico]]-[[political|political]] [[struggle]] is thus ultimately reduced to an [[epiphenomenon]] of "[[objective]]" [[social processes]], [[power]]s and their conflicts. For Laclau, on the contrary, the fact that some particular struggle is elevated into the "[[universal equivalent]]" of all struggles is not a pre-determined fact, but itself the result of the [[contingent]] political struggle for hegemony - in some constellation, this struggle can be the workers' struggle, in [[another]] constellation, the patriotic [[anti-colonialism|anti-colonialist struggle]], in yet another constellation the [[anti-racism|anti-racist struggle]] for [[culture|cultural]] [[tolerance]]... <i>there is [[nothing]] in the inherent positive qualities of some particular struggle that predestines it for such a hegemonic [[role]]</i> of the "[[general equivalent]]" of all struggles. The struggle for hegemony thus not only presupposes an [[irreducibility|irreducible]] [[gap]] between the [[universal]] [[form]] and the [[multiplicity]] of [[particular]] [[contents]], but also the [[contingency|contigent]] [[process]] by means of which one among these contents is "[[transubstantiation|transubstantiated]]" into the immediate embodiment of the universal dimension - say (Laclau's own example), in [[Poland]] of the 1980, the particular [[demands]] of <i>[[Solidarnosc]]</i> were elevated into the embodiment of the people's [[global]] [[rejection]] of the [[Soviet Union|Communist regime]], so that all different versions of the [[anti-Communism|anti-Communist]] opposition (from the [[conservative]]-[[nationalism|nationalist]] opposition through the [[liberal democracy|liberal-democratic]] opposition and [[culture|cultural]] [[dissidence]] to [[Left]]ist [[workers]]' opposition) recognized themselves in the [[empty signifier]] "Solidarnosc."
This is how [[Laclau]] tries to distinguish his [[position]] both from [[gradualism]] (which reduces the very dimension of the [[political]]: all that remains is the gradual realization of [[particular]] "[[democracy|democratic]]" [[demands]] within the differential social space) as well as from the opposite [[idea]] of a total [[revolution]] that would bring about a fully [[self-reconciliation|self-reconciled]] [[society]]: what both extremes miss is the [[struggle]] for [[hegemony]] in which a particular demand is "[[elevated to the dignity of the Thing]]," i.e., comes to stand for the [[universality]] of "[[people]]." The field of politics is thus caught in an [[irreducibility|irreducible tension]] between "[[empty signifiers|empty]]" and "[[floating|floating signifiers]]" [[signifier]]s: some particular [[signifiers]] start to function as "empty," directly embodying the universal dimension, incorporating into the [[chain]] of [[equivalences]] which they totalize a large [[number]] of "[[floating]]" signifiers. Laclau mobilizes this [[gap]] between the "[[ontological]]" need for a populist protest vote (conditioned by the fact that the hegemonic power [[discourse]] cannot incorporate a series of popular demands) and the contingent [[ontic]] content to which this vote gets attached, to explain the shift of many [[French]] voters who, till the 1970s, supported the [[Communist Party]] to the [[Right]]ist [[populism]] of the <i>[[Front National]]</i><ref>Laclau, op.cit., p. 88.</ref> - the elegance of this solution is that it dispenses us with the boring topic of the alleged "deeper ([[totalitarianism|totalitarian]], of course) [[solidarity]]" between the extreme [[Right]] and the "extreme" [[Left]].
In populism proper, this "abstract" [[character]] is furthermore always supplemented by the <i>pseudo-concreteness</i> of the figure that is selected as THE enemy, the [[singular]] [[agent]] behind all the [[threats]] to the [[people]]. One can buy today laptops with the keyboard artificially imitating the [[resistance]] to the fingers of the old typewriter, as well as the typewriter sound of the [[letter]] hitting the paper - what better example of the [[recent]] need for pseudo-concrecy? Today, when not only social relations but also [[technology]] are getting more and more non-[[transparent]] (who can visualize what is going on [[inside]] a PC?), there is a great need to re-create an artificial concrecy in [[order]] to enable individuals to relate to their [[complex]] environs as to a meaningful [[life-world]]. In computer programming, this was the step accomplished by Apple: the pseudo-concrecy of icons. [[Guy Debord]]'s old [[formula]] about the "[[society of spectacle]]" is thus getting a new twist: [[image]]s are created in order to fill in the [[gap]] that separates the new artificial [[universe]] from our old [[life-world]] surroundings, i.e., to "domesticate" this new universe. And is the pseudo-[[concrete]] populist figure of the "Jew" that condenses the vast [[multitude]] of anonymous forces that determine us not analogous to a computer board that imitates the old typewriter board? Jew as the enemy definitely emerges from outside the social demands that [[experience]] themselves as frustrated.
This supplement to Laclau's definition of populism in no way implies any kind of regress at the [[ontic]] level: we remain at the [[formal]]-[[ontological]] level and, while accepting Laclau's [[thesis]] that populism is a certain formal political logic, not bounded by any content, only supplement it with the characteristic (no less "[[transcendental]]" its other features) of "[[reification|reifying]]" [[antagonism]] into a positive entity. As such, populism by definition contains a minimum, an elementary [[form]], of [[ideological mystification]]; which is why, although it is effectively a formal [[frame]]/matrix of political logic that can be given different political twists (reactionary-nationalist, progressive-nationalist...), nonetheless, insofar as, in its very [[notion]], it displaces the immanent [[social antagonism]] into the antagonism between the [[unified]] "[[people]]" and its [[external]] [[enemy]], it harbors "[[in the last instance]]" a long-term [[proto-Fascist]] tendency.<ref>Many people sympathetic to the [[Hugo]] Chavez' [[regime]] in Venezuela like to oppose Chavez' flamboyant and sometimes clownish <i>caudillo</i> style to the vast popular movement of the self-organization of the poor and dispossessed that surprisingly brought him back to power after he was deposed in a US-backed coup; the error of this view is to [[think]] that one can have the second without the first: the popular movement <i>[[needs]]</i> the identificatory figure of a charismatic leader. The limitation of Chavez lies elsewhere, in the very factor which enables him to play his role: the oil money. It is as if oil is always a mixed blessing, if not an outright curse. Because of this supply, he can go on making populist gestures without "paying the full price for them," without really inventing something new at the socio-economic level. Money makes him possible to [[practice]] inconsistent politics (populist anti-[[capitalist]] measures AND leaving the capitalist edifice basically untouched), of not acting but postponing [[The Act|the act]], the radical change. (In spite of his anti-US rhetoric, Chavez takes great care that Venezuelan contracts with the US are regularly met - he effectively is a "Fidel with oil.")</ref>
This is also why it is problematic to count any kind of [[Communism|Communist movement]] as a version of populism. After evoking the possibility that the point of [[shared identification]] that holds together a crowd can shift from the person of the [[leader]] to an impersonal idea, [[Freud]] goes on: "This abstraction, again, may be more or less completely embodied in the figure of what we may call a secondary leader, and interesting varieties would arise from the relation between the idea and the leader."<ref>[[Sigmund Freud]], <i>Group [[Psychology]] and the Analysis of the Ego</i>, SE, Vol. XVIII, p. 100.</ref> Does this not hold especially for the [[Stalinism|Stalinist]] [[leader]] who, in contrast to the [[Fascism|Fascist]] leader, is a "secondary leader," the embodiment-[[instrument]] of the [[Communist]] Idea? This is the reason Communist movements and regimes cannot be categorized as populist.
==The Turkish March==
The general conclusion is that, although the topic of populism is emerging as crucial in today's political scenery, it cannot be used as the ground for the renewal of the [[emancipatory politics]]. The first thing to note is that today's populism is different from the traditional version - what distinguishes it is the opponent against which it mobilizes the people: the rise of "[[post-politics]]," the growing reduction of politics proper to the rational administration of the conflicting interests. In the highly developed countries of the US and [[Western Europe]], at least, "populism" is emerging as the inherent [[shadowy double]] of the institutionalized [[Post-Politics|post-politics]], one is almost tempted to say: as its <i>[[supplement]]</i> in the [[Derrida|Derridean]] sense, as the arena in which political demands that do not fit the institutionalized space can be articulated. In this sense, there is a constitutive "mystification" that pertains to populism: its basic gesture is to refuse to confront the complexity of the situation, to reduce it to a clear struggle with a pseudo-concrete "[[enemy]]" figure (from "Brussels bureaucracy" to illegal immigrants). "Populism" is thus by definition a [[negative]] phenomenon, a phenomenon grounded in a [[refusal]], even an implicit admission of [[impotence]]. We all [[know]] the old [[joke]] about a guy [[looking]] for his lost key under the street light; when asked where did he lost it, he admits that it was in a dark corner behind; so why is he looking for it here, under the light? Because the visibility is much better here... there is always something of this trick in populism. So not only is populism not the area within which today's emancipatory projects should inscribe themselves - one should even go a step further and propose that the main task of today's emancipatory politics, its life-and-death problem, is to find a form of political mobilization that, while (like populism) critical of institutionalized politics, will AVOID the populist temptation.
Where, then, does all this leave us with regard to [[Europe]]'s <i>imbroglio</i>? The French voters were not given a clear symmetrical choice, since the very terms of the choice privileged the YES: the elite proposed to the people a choice which was effectively no choice at all - people were called to ratify the inevitable, the result of enlightened expertise. The [[media]] and the political [[elite]] presented the choice as the one between [[knowledge]] and [[ignorance]], between expertise and [[ideology]], between [[post-politics|post-political]] administration and old political passions of the [[Left]] and the [[Right]].<ref>The limitation of post-politics is best exemplified not only by the success of rightist populism, but by the UK elections of 2005: in spite of the growing unpopularity of Tony Blair (he was is regularly voted the most unpopular person in the UK), there is no way for this discontent with Blair to find a politically effective expression; such a frustration can only foment dangerous extra-parliamentary explosions.</ref> The NO was thus dismissed as a short-sighted reaction not aware of its own consequences: a murky reaction of fear of the emerging new [[postindustrialism|postindustrial]] [[global order]], an [[instinct]] to stick to and protect the comfortable [[Welfare]] [[State]] traditions - a gesture of refusal [[lacking]] any positive alternative program. No wonder the only political parties whose official stance was No were the parties at the opposite extreme of the political spectrum, [[le Pen]]'s [[Front National]] at the Right and the [[Communism|Communists]] and [[Trotskyism|Trotskytes]] at the Left.
The unofficial anthem of the [[European Union]], heard at numerous political, cultural and sportive public events, is the "Ode to Joy" melody from the last movement of [[Beethoven]] 9th symphony, a true "[[empty signifier]]" that can stand for anything. In [[France]], it was elevated by Romain Rolland into the a [[humanist]] ode to the brotherhood of all people ("the Marseillaise of humanity"); in 1938, it was performed as the highpoint of <i>Reichsmusiktage</i> and later for [[Hitler]]'s birthday; in [[China]] of the [[Cultural Revolution]], in the atmosphere of rejecting European classics, it was redeemed as a piece of progressive [[class struggle]], while in today's [[Japan]], it achieved a cult status, being woven into the very social fabric with its alleged message of "joy through [[suffering]]"; till 1970s, i.e., during the time when both West and East German olympic teams had to perform together, as one German team, the anthem played for the German gold medal was the Joy song, and, simultaneously, the Rhodesian white supremacist regime of Ian Smith which proclaimed independence in the late 1960s in order to maintain apartheid also proclaimed the same song its national anthem. Even Abimael Guzman, the (now imprisoned) leader of the <i>Sendero Luminoso</i>, when asked what [[music]] he [[loves]], mentioned the forth movement of Beethoven's Ninth. So we can easily imagine a fictional performance at which all the sworn enemies, from [[Hitler]] to [[Stalin]], from [[Bush]] to [[Saddam]], for a moment forget their adversities and participate in the same [[magic]] moment of ecstatic brotherhood...
However, before we dismiss the fourth movement as a piece "destroyed through social usage," let us note some peculiarities of its structure. In the middle of the movement, after we hear the main melody (the Joy theme) in [[three]] orchestral and three vocal variations, at this first climax, something unexpected happens which bothers critics for the last 180 years after the first performance: at bar 331, the tone changes totally, and, instead of the solemn hymnic progression, the same "Joy" theme is repeated in the <i>marcia Turca</i> ("Turkish march") style, borrowed from the military music for wind and percussion instruments that 18<sup>th</sup> century European armies adopted from the Turkish Janissaries - the mode is here that of a carnivalesque popular parade, a mocking [[spectacle]]...<ref>Some critics even compare the "absurd grunts" of the bassoons and bass drum that accompany the beginning of the <i>marcia Turca</i> to farts - see Cook, op.cit., p. 103.</ref> and after this point, everything goes wrong, the simple solemn dignity of the first part of the movement is never recovered: after this "Turkish" part and in a clear counter-movement to it, in a kind of retreat into the innermost religiosity, the choral-like music (dismissed by some critics as a "Gregorian fossil") tries to render the ethereal image of millions of people who kneal down embraced, contemplating in awe the distant sky and searching for the loving paternal [[God]] who must dwell above the canopy of stars ("<i>ueberm Sternezelt muss ein lieber Vater wohnen</i>"); however, the music as it were gets stuck when the word "muss," first rendered by the basses, is repeated by the tenors and altos, and finally by the sopranos, as if this repeated conjuring presents a desperate attempt to convince us (and itself) of what it [[knows]] is not true, making the line "a loving father must dwell" into a desperate act if beseeching, and thus attesting to the fact that there is nothing beyond the canopy of stars, no loving father to protect us and to guarantee our brotherhood. After this, a [[return]] to a more celebratory mood is tempted in the guise of the double fugue which cannot but sound [[false]] in its excessively artificial brilliance, a fake [[synthesis]] if there ever was one, a desperate attempt to cover up the [[void]] of the [[Absent|ABSENT ]] God revealed in the previous section. But the final cadenza is the strangest of them all, sounding not at all as Beethoven but more like a puffed up version of the finale of [[Mozart]]'s <i>[[Abduction from Seraglio]]</i>, combining the "Turkish" elements with the fast rococo spectacle. (And let us not forget the lesson of this Mozart's [[opera]]: the figure of the oriental despot is presented there as a true enlightened [[Master]].) The finale is thus a weird mixture of [[Orientalism]] and [[regression]] into the late 18<sup>th</sup> century classicism, a double retreat from the historical present, a silent admission of the purely [[fantasmatic]] character of the Joy of the all-encompassing brotherhood. If there ever was a music that literally "deconstructs itself," this is it: the contrast between the highly ordered linear progression of the first part of the movement and the precipituous, heterogeneous and inconsistent, character of the second part cannot be stronger - no wonder that already in 1826, 2 years after the first performance, some reviewers described the finale as "a festival of hatred towards all that can be called human joy. With gigantic strength the perilous hoard emerges, tearing hearts asunder and darkening the divine spark of gods with noisy, monstrous mocking."<ref>Lines attributed to Gottfried Frank; quoted from Nicholas Cook, <i>Beethoven: Symphony No. 9</i>, Cambridge: Cambridge [[University]] Press 2003, p. 93.</ref> (Of course, these lines are not meant as a criticism of [[Beethoven]] - quite on the contrary, in an [[Adorno|Adornian]] mode, one should discern in this failure of the fourth movement Beethoven's artistic integrity: the truthful indexation of the failure of the very [[Enlightenment]] project of [[universal brotherhood]].)
Beethoven's Ninth is thus full of what Nicholas Cook called "unconsummated symbols"<ref>Cook, op.cit., p. 103.</ref>: elements which are in excess of the global meaning of the work (or of the movement in which they occur), which do not fit this meaning, although it is not clear what additional meaning they bring. Cook lists the "funeral march" at bar 513 of the first movement, the abrupt ending of the second movement, the military tones in the [[third]] movement, the so-called "[[horror]] fanfares," the Turkish march, and many other moments in the fourth movement - all these elements "vibrate with an implied [[significance]] that overflows the musical scenario."<ref>Maynard Solomon, quoted in Cook, op.cit., p. 93.</ref> It is not simply that their meaning should be uncovered through an attentive [[interpretation]] - the very relation between [[texture]] and [[meaning]] is inverted here: if the predominant "musical scenario" seems to set into music a clear pre-established meaning (the celebration of Joy, the [[universal brotherhood]]...), here the meaning is not given in advance, but seems to float in some kind of [[virtual]] indeterminacy - it is as if we know THAT there is (or, rather, HAS to be) some meaning, without every being able to establish WHAT this meaning is.
