Rethinking popular demands in times of weakening democracies: populism and the redefinition of the democratic imaginary according to Ernesto Laclau/Repensando as demandas populares em tempos de fragilidade democratica: o populismo e a redefinicao do imaginario democratico a partir de Ernesto Laclau

• Published in: Revista brasileira de estudos políticos no. 126; p. 289
• Main Author: de Almeida, Leonardo Monteiro Crespo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Faculdade de direito 01-01-2023
• Subjects: Arditi, Benjamín; Laclau, Ernesto; Rancière, Jacques; Brasil
• ISSN: 0034-7191
• DOI: 10.9732/2023.V126.692

The chief objective of this article is to reanalyze how popular demands within Ernesto Laclau's theoretical work on populism could be relevant to the formation of the new collective political subjects and their struggle for the recognition of their legal claims. This intervention intends to further develop the constitutive values of a society of equal and free subjects that is the goal of the democratic revolution. The logic of populism as Laclau conceives is political dynamic that seeks to expose the popular demands marginality to institutional spaces of political deliberation which usually avoids them. Since populist logic depends on the construction of the people as a collective political subject, this research turns to Benjamin Arditi and Jacques Ranciere in order to analytically develop the potential of the people as a force that can resist political institutions and pushes for the further implementation of rights and guarantees ignored by those political institutions themselves. Literature review of Ernesto Laclau's chief works, which is also supplemented by one made with Arditi and Ranciere's works, is adopted as research's method. The conclusion is that, while a populist logic can be quite relevant to deal with an expressive lack of popular representation, it brings with itself a potentially close relation with forms of authoritarianism that cancels democracy.