Abstract
ABSTRACT Mobilizing Laclau’s earlier conceptualization of populism as the politicization of class struggle and its overlap with Poulantzas’ relational theory of the capitalist state, this paper proposes to see populism as the struggle for the reconstitution of popular and class antagonisms, and as partly determined by anti-populism – concerned with the repression of these antagonisms. I use Michael Bray’s account of populism as a ‘symptom’ of repressed class antagonisms to argue that the relations structuring the capitalist state both determine populism and are rendered visible through populism. I present the Gilets jaunes protests (2018–2019) as a case in point not only of the populist struggle for unveiling such relations, but also of the anti-populist efforts at keeping them invisible – reminiscent of Poulantzas’ identification of the construction of a ‘people-nation’, the atomization of the body-politic, and the separation between mental and manual labor as the key mechanisms ensuring the reproduction of the capitalist state.
Published Version
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