ABSTRACT
After citing Cas Mudde, to give basic shape to our problem, this chapter discusses Laclau and Mouffe’s Gramsci-inspired argument that populism can be either left-wing or right-wing. It is argued that this position (involving transformism) is fallacious, and that the only possible conclusion that can be drawn from it is that populism is necessarily right-wing. However, once the condition of hegemony is removed, as in our new category of ‘a populism of singularities’, we see that populism is necessarily left-wing, in the sense that in each case of its emergence, it adheres to the void of a given social situation. What we call right-wing populism should actually be considered a perversion of left-wing populism, since it involves shutting down a void in the name of the plenitude of the relevant situation of being. Thus, it tends to emerge after left-wing populism, chronologically speaking. This argument is derived from Alain Badiou’s discussion of ethics. Jorge Alemán’s deployment of Lacan’s theory of capitalist discourse (part of the latter’s theory of four discourses) is also discussed, to test whether it fits with the concept of a populism of singularities. It does not, although Alemán’s general argument – that populism is necessarily left-wing – is endorsed.
