Heterogeneidad, irrupción radical y mito en la génesis de las interpelaciones populistas durante la conformación del peronismo

Abstract

This paper seeks to question Laclau’s and Barros’s concept of populism as “irruption of heterogeneity”. Therefore, it briefly describes the debate on the ideological and discursive specificity of populism, in order to contrast Laclau’s and Barros’s recent contributions with a historical analysis of the context in which peronist discourse became populist. Drawing upon de Ípola and Aboy Carlés, the paper asserts that the emergence of populist interpellations took place only after the incorporation of the masses, and therefore these interpellations are not a manifestation of the irruption of such masses by themselves, but a way of re-signifying their incorporation to politics. Relying on Barthes’s concept of “myth”, it is asserted that the irruption of the masses as antagonistic to the dominant elite takes place as a retroactive construction, and not as a consequence of the irruption itself.