Populism: the huge semiotic upheaval?

Abstract

Populism and populist are names which, at the same time, are ill-defined, even indefinable, and whose enunciation is nevertheless efficient. The initial argument of this study consists of an inversion of this relationship: it is precisely because of this indeterminacy that their enunciation is efficient. The difficulty of a stable definition of populism is a direct consequence of the contemporary transformation of the collective actant which is called people, which is today itself indeterminate, fluctuating and heterogeneous. One of the consequences of this situation consists in claiming the populist denomination, because this public claim is a legitimation, both of the existence of a collective actant called people, and of the coherence of the political themes and positions associated. We thus circumscribe the problem to be treated: on the one hand, we attribute to populism political themes and positions that are not specific to it, and on the other hand, we associate populism with sad passions (distrust, rejection on the other, suffering, hatred, fear ...), which opinion studies on collective passions show that they are also shared by the majority of citizens, far beyond those who vote for populist candidates. Our hypothesis is then that, in the case of populist voting and political expression, these sad passions function as attractors for the political themes and positions associated with populism.