Peoples, Nations and Social Heterogeneity. From Hegel to Laclau and Back

Abstract

Ernesto Laclau’s work, On Populist Reason, is a crucial landmark in the attempts of post-modern political philosophy to grasp the logic of contingency at work in the production of political subjects. However, in recent years, this post-foundationalist approach seems to have reached an impasse when confronted with the persistence, success and efficacy of certain poles of identification that seem to resist the idea of a radical contingency of collective engagements. I argue that a new dialogue between the Hegelian philosophy of history and Laclau’s post-foundationalism can be fruitful in overcoming this stalemate. Rather than reigniting the debate surrounding historicism, Laclau’s evocation of the notion of peoples without history allows for an exploration of the radical heterogeneity implied in the situational, somatic, and affective rootedness of the formation of historical identities. I ground this hypothesis in a detailed examining of Hegel’s own take on the a-historical spiritual formations and on the difference he makes between the “people”, as institutionalized collective consciousness and the “nation” as its situated genesis. I claim that this Hegelian dialectic approach to nationhood far from does not limit the political horizons to the “nationalist” or “nativist” rhetoric. Instead, it offers a new light on the challenges of post-foundationalist approaches when it comes to understanding the concreteness of political subjectivation.