Populism in Ernesto Laclau's perspective: an alternative for the left?

This article aims to: 1) present the concept of populism built by the Argentine political theorist Ernesto Laclau; 2) to critically analyze the defense of the practical application of populism in the political field. The important contribution of the author constitutes a great advance for the understanding of the phenomenon of the populism as a political logic endowed with own rationality. In contrast to the traditional literature, he offers a perception away from judgements in which populism is taken as a way of construction of the people, such as any other. It does not carry any specific content, from the right or left wing, good or bad, as it was traditionally believed. Nevertheless, in agreement with the theoretical construction of the author, we were led to question over the desirability of populism in the political field considering its nature, based specifically on the hegemonic construction of a people against the power. Our hypothesis was that populist logic is incompatible with democracy. This is because, instead of considering the whole of the community, it causes a radical antagonistic split in the social. Thus, we are not concerned with demonstrating that Laclau's work is a mistake and that we must return to the traditional view but analyze whether populist political logic should be accepted by the political left considering its possible damage to democracy.