How ‘empty’ is the signifier ‘the people’? Impasses of the poststructuralist approach in Ernesto Laclau’s political ontology

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article looks at the ‘empty signifier’, a central but nonetheless elusive concept for understanding the logic that underpins the political construction of ‘the people’ as it was theorized in On Populist Reason. It begins by examining its epistemological foundations, which revisit the principles of Saussurean modern linguistics, and its limitations based on a critique of (post)structuralist literature. Among the authors that Ernesto Laclau mobilized, particular attention is paid to the ‘logic of the signifier’ in Lacanian theory. The article then moves on to an analysis of the concept within the broader framework of the political ontology of which it is part (‘discourse theory’). This is followed by a discussion of recent examples of the use of symbols in the construction of concrete ‘popular’ or ‘populist’ identities. The question is whether the ‘empty’ and ‘floating’ signifiers are truly empty and how Laclau explains this ‘emptiness’. More globally, our aim is to identify the impasses in the theory of political subjectivation around empty signifiers. In conclusion, this article argues that there are some problems associated with the conception of signifiers, such as that ‘empty’ seems to refer in an ambiguous way to different ‘degrees’ of emptiness leading to theoretical and practical consequences.