The transgressive aesthetics of populism

Abstract

This article consolidates the emerging discursive-performative paradigm in populist studies by presenting the idea of populism as an aesthetic transgression, bridging the gap between discursive and sociocultural-performative strands. The article is broadly inspired by Jacques Rancière’s notion of aesthetics as the ‘partage du sensible’ and critically employs it to understand how populism transgresses the rules establishing what can appear in politics. The article claims that populism is aesthetically transgressive in two ways: (1) by making visible subalternised subjects through the discursive articulation of the ‘people’ and (2) by naming the ‘elite’ in a way that makes visible underlying modes of domination. The article argues that this framework allows for a more fruitful understanding of the relationship between populism and topics such as crisis and institutionalism. Moreover, the article employs this framework to differentiate between emancipatory and reactionary forms of populism, connecting emancipatory populism to queer aesthetic practices and explaining how it reinvigorates liberal democracy. Conversely, reactionary populism mobilises what Hannah Arendt called the ‘mob’ and ends up reinforcing modes of domination.

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The transgressive aesthetics
of populism
Thomás Zicman de Barros
Universidade do Minho, Portugal; Sciences Po Paris, France
Théo Aiolfi
Université de Bourgogne, France
Abstract
This article consolidates the emerging discursive-performative paradigm in populist studies by
presenting the idea of populism as an aesthetic transgression, bridging the gap between discursive
and sociocultural-performative strands. The article is broadly inspired by Jacques Rancière’s notion
of aesthetics as the ‘partage du sensible’ and critically employs it to understand how populism
transgresses the rules establishing what can appear in politics. The article claims that populism
is aesthetically transgressive in two ways: (1) by making visible subalternised subjects through
the discursive articulation of the ‘people’ and (2) by naming the ‘elite’ in a way that makes visible
underlying modes of domination. The article argues that this framework allows for a more fruitful
understanding of the relationship between populism and topics such as crisis and institutionalism.
Moreover, the article employs this framework to differentiate between emancipatory and
reactionary forms of populism, connecting emancipatory populism to queer aesthetic practices
and explaining how it reinvigorates liberal democracy. Conversely, reactionary populism mobilises
what Hannah Arendt called the ‘mob’ and ends up reinforcing modes of domination.
Keywords
aesthetics, populism, queer theory, subaltern studies, transgression
Received: 21st June 2024; Revised version received: 31st October 2024; Accepted: 6th December 2024
Introduction
This article presents the idea of populism as an aesthetic transgression to consolidate
the emerging discursive-performative paradigm in the critical literature of populist
studies (Ostiguy et al., 2021: 256). This paradigm integrates two preceding strands
that had been developing in parallel and in mutual sympathy for years. The first strand
is the discursive current, inspired mainly by Ernesto Laclau’s conceptualisation of
populism as the discursive articulation of the divide between ‘people’ and ‘elite’. The
Corresponding author:
Thomás Zicman de Barros, Centre for Ethics, Politics and Society, Universidade do Minho, Campus de
Gualtar, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal.
Email: thomas.zicmandebarros@sciencespo.fr
1312601POL0010.1177/02633957241312601PoliticsZicman de Barros and Aiolfi
research-article2025
Article

2 Politics 00(0)
second strand is composed of the sociocultural and performative currents, which intro-
duced new features to populism like the flaunting of the ‘low’ and the performative
mediation of crisis. Despite the encouraging results of the interface between these two
perspectives, which in recent years have yielded promising contributions for critical
populism studies (Casullo and Colalongo, 2022: 62; Venizelos, 2023: 5; Petrović-
Lotina and Aiolfi, 2023: 7), their interconnection remains hitherto under-theorised.
Even though these promising efforts have reduced the gap between the discursive and
performative approaches, work is still required to explain what transformations in the
theoretical background of each of the strands are needed for them to be articulated.
We argue that the discursive-performative approach can successfully integrate these two
preceding strands if one conceives populism above all as a transgressive aesthetics. The
notion of transgression was already marginally present in the work of Laclau and has
recently picked up salience, particularly in the sociocultural-performative approach.
However, while Laclau and scholars from the discursive approach have included in their
analysis the cases of collective actors like movements and parties, recent contributions from
the performative scholarship tend to have a micro-sociological bias by focusing primarily
on the performances of the populist leader (Peetz, 2020: 642–643; Casullo, 2021: 77; Aiolfi,
2022: 3). We argue that the potential of transgression should not be confined to the embod-
ied practices of leaders but instead be expanded to capture the unsettling of the political
order that is intrinsic to populism. For this purpose, we critically mobilise Jacques Rancière’s
notion of aesthetics as the ‘partage du sensible’ to consider the way populism broadly trans-
gresses the rules establishing what can be seen and what remains invisible in politics.
Beyond the embodied performances of particular leaders, we understand that pop-
ulism is aesthetically transgressive in two senses. First, the discursive articulation of the
‘people’ makes visible and incorporates into politics what Laclau, after Georges Bataille,
called the heterogeneous – marginalised subaltern subjects located outside of the public
sphere. Second, populism is aesthetically transgressive when it names the ‘elite’ in such
a way that makes visible the underlying modes of domination that rule the ‘partage of the
sensible’. From these two sources of aesthetic transgression, one sustains a framework
that encompasses Laclau’s discourse theory and the contributions of the sociocultural-
performative strand in an articulated whole. Moreover, one also acquires tools for an
aesthetic judgement that allow for a clearer distinction between emancipatory and reac-
tionary forms of populism, according to the different ways of performing and dealing
with transgression.
To develop our argument, the article is divided into three sections. The first section
provides an overview of the critical scholarship on populism, highlighting the synergies
as well as the differences between the discursive and sociocultural-performative
approaches to showcase how the concept of transgressive aesthetics can act as the
bridge between them. Following this, in the second part of our text, we critically medi-
ate Rancière’s concept of aesthetics and Laclau’s comments on heterogeneity as we
endeavour to articulate a compelling argument advocating for an aesthetic conception
of populism. We explain how by naming the ‘people’ and the ‘elite’, populism trans-
gresses the rules guiding the ‘partage du sensible’, incorporating subalternised subjects
into politics and disclosing invisible modes of domination. We also discuss how the
idea of a transgressive aesthetics reframes central themes in the critical literature on
populism such as the relationship between populism and crisis in its ontic and ‘onto-
logical’ dimensions, and the opposition between populism and institutionalism. The

Zicman de Barros and Aiolfi 3
third part draws on reflections on aesthetic judgement and queer theory to explain how
seeing populism as a transgressive aesthetics sheds new light on the divide between
emancipatory and reactionary forms of populism. On the one hand, an emancipatory
populism constructs an inclusionary ‘people’. Connecting emancipatory populism to
queer aesthetic practices, we defend that it serves as a means for subalternised subjects
to claim their place in politics, reinvigorating liberal democracy. On the other hand, a
reactionary populism mobilises what Arendt called the ‘mob’. It involves scapegoating
others, reinforcing modes of domination, and threatening liberal democracy. As a
whole, this article seeks to offer more than just a synthesis of two theoretical perspec-
tives on populism, it shows a path forward for the study of populism which genuinely
captures the interconnection between politics and aesthetics.
Bridging the discursive and sociocultural-performative
approaches to populism
The present paper is situated at the crossroads of critical approaches in populism studies
and aims to integrate them. However, before delving into the topic, it is important to pro-
vide the contextual backdrop of the extensive and dynamic literature on populism from
recent decades. Critical scholars engaged in the study of populism often distinguish them-
selves from what is perceived as the ‘mainstream’ theories on the subject. Generally, main-
stream approaches tend to adopt a negative tone surrounding the word ‘populism’, viewing
it as an inherent threat to liberal democracy (Arato, 2013: 161; Urbinati, 2019: 8).
Conceptually, many mainstream scholars doing empirical work embrace the strategic and
ideational approaches to populism. The hostility towards populism is clear in the strategic
approach to populism, which emerged from the scholarship on Latin American politics to
address the role of personalistic leadership in a context with little institutional mediation
(Roberts, 1995: 87; Weyland, 1999: 381). The ideational approach, which defines pop-
ulism as a ‘thin-centred ideology’ (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017: 6), sketches a
more ambivalent position on the relationship between populism and liberal democracy, but
ultimately depicts populism as necessarily moralistic, and concludes that populism in
power will always be deleterious for liberal democratic institutions. It is against these anti-
populist stances and by adopting a post-foundational stance that critical approaches
emerge. They question the negative connotation attributed to ‘populism’, claiming that
populism could – at least in some cases – serve as a catalyst for the radicalisation of liberal
democracy and political emancipation.
The single most important influence for critical approaches to populism is the work of
Ernesto Laclau. In the lineage of the post-Marxist approach to political hegemony that he
developed with Chantal Mouffe and which was more widely expanded by the Essex
school of post-structural discourse analysis, Laclau’s (2005a: ix) central idea is that pop-
ulism is primarily a way of constructing political subjects and collective identities. It
employs a political logic that discursively and performatively articulates what he calls
‘empty signifiers’ (Laclau, 1996: 38; Zicman de Barros, 2023a: 4–5). The first empty
signifier of a populist discourse is the ‘people’, a name that works as the point of conver-
gence of a series of unaddressed political grievances, giving shape to a sense of common-
ality. However, in populism this discursive articulation of the ‘people’ also relies on a
‘negative’ foil, from which this ‘people’ is separated through an antagonistic frontier
(Laclau, 2005a: 160; Zicman de Barros, 2023a: 8–9). This ‘negative’ empty signifier is
usually described in the literature as the ‘establishment’, ‘la casta’ or more commonly,

4 Politics 00(0)
the ‘elite’. Just like the ‘people’, the ‘elite’ is an empty signifier whose meaning is con-
tested but always relies on a similar core. Indeed, the ‘elite’ is performatively framed as
the focal collective of powerful subjects embodying what is wrong with the authoritative
structures of the political system, the dysfunctioning part of society that ought to be
changed. As such, the ‘people’ and the ‘elite’ are mutually co-constituted as collective
entities that are exclusive to one another, although they are deeply connected through a
power asymmetry benefitting the ‘elite’ at the expense of the ‘people’. By investigating
the very process of the discursive construction of ‘people’ and ‘elite’, Laclau’s theory
provided the foundation of the critical research on populism, fostering a vibrant scholar-
ship that further develops his perspective both empirically and theoretically.
A frequent criticism addressed to the discursive approach is an excessive and increas-
ing formalism in Laclau’s work (Stavrakakis, 2004: 262). According to Borriello and
Jäger (2020: 308), as Laclau tried to derive an ontological theory of the political from his
ontic reflections on populism, he ended up ‘with a notion of populism undone of any
specific content’. To deal with this shortcoming, in parallel to this expansion of this dis-
cursive approach to populism, which emphasised antagonism as the key feature of popu-
list politics, other scholars engaged with other disciplines like sociology, rhetoric, and
performance studies to demonstrate that there was more to populism than an opposition
between ‘us’ against ‘them’ – in general, the ‘people’ against the ‘elite’. Among these
scholars, Pierre Ostiguy (2017: 73) argued that populism relied on ‘flaunting the low’, in
opposition to the ‘high’ register of practices and discourses dominant in the political elite.
Building on Bourdieusian sociology, he argued that politics could not be properly under-
stood by solely relying on the traditional axis opposing left and right and that it needed to
be complemented by another opposition: the high-low axis which would capture the cul-
tural component of politics. Mapping ‘ways of being and acting in politics’, and more
precisely ‘ways of relating to people’ (Ostiguy, 2009: 5), this new axis distinguishes the
‘high’, that is educated, sophisticated and procedural practices in politics, from the ‘low’,
which conversely captures popular, raw and personalistic practices. Adding a Laclauian
flair to his early definition, Ostiguy (2017: 84) later defined populism as ‘the antagonistic,
mobilizational flaunting of the ‘low’’. This ‘intuitively familiar’ (Ostiguy, 2009: 1) defi-
nition was however limited by its lack of engagement with the minimal characteristic of
populism in the discursive perspective: the opposition between ‘people’ and ‘elite, which
Ostiguy implicitly aligned with respectively the ‘low’ and the ‘high’. While his approach
captured a hitherto underexplored facet of populism, Ostiguy ignored the discursive and
performative construction of the ‘people’ and the ‘elite’.
To tackle this criticism and bridge Ostiguy’s approach with the work of Laclauian
scholars, Benjamin Moffitt chose to include the ‘flaunting of the low’ as one of the
core features of what he called the populist style. As such, alongside the ‘appeal to
“the people” versus “the elite”’ (Moffitt, 2016: 45) which corresponds to his inclu-
sion of people-centrism and anti-elitism, Moffitt built on, among others, Ostiguy’s
formulation of the ‘low’ to coin the original concept of ‘bad manners’, defined as ‘a
general disregard for ‘appropriate’ ways of acting on the political stage’ (Moffitt,
2016: 55). Alongside a third feature, which he identified as ‘performance of crisis,
breakdown or threat’, these additions to the antagonism between ‘people’ and ‘elite’
substantially enriched the stylistic approach to populism. However, their interconnec-
tion remained under-theorised and conceptually inconsistent. Indeed, his definition
of what he called the populist style simultaneously included discursive framing
(‘appeal to “the people” versus “the elite”’), sociocultural practices (‘bad manners’),

Zicman de Barros and Aiolfi 5
and performative construction (‘performance of crisis’) which were all different ana-
lytical categories without developing the way they were connected. Although their
identification and juxtaposition were undoubtedly innovative, Moffitt’s three features
remained ambiguous in their definition and lacked theoretical elaboration to make
them more than descriptive tools to identify populism in action.
As a whole, while their contributions are inspiring, neither Ostiguy’s ‘flaunting of
the low’ nor Moffitt’s ‘bad manners’ or performance of crisis sufficiently developed the
theoretical implications of connecting their concepts with the discursive core of the
antagonism between ‘people’ and ‘elite’. In other words, even though their concepts
proved intuitively relevant, their definitions did not justify why these sociocultural and
performative elements were fundamentally necessary within the articulation of the
‘people’ and the ‘elite’.
Indeed, while a convergence around a ‘post-Laclauian consensus’ was recently
acknowledged between the discursive and performative approaches to populism, which
was aptly named the ‘discursive-performative approach to populism’ (Ostiguy et al.,
2021: 256), this intuitive complementarity remains under-theorised. We argue that one of
the main reasons for this lies in the intrinsic limitations of the concepts of ‘low’ and ‘bad
manners’. In his article defending a conception of populism as a ‘transgressive style’,
Théo Aiolfi (2022: 1) challenged Ostiguy and Moffitt’s concepts for under-developing
the purpose of ‘flaunting the low’, ignoring a range of norm-breaking practices that ‘bad
manners’ could not capture and relying on a normative binary. Starting from the premise
that the strategic use of what Ostiguy and Moffitt describe as socioculturally ‘low’ was to
differentiate themselves from other political actors, he made the case for using instead the
concept of transgression, defined as ‘the violation of a norm of political relevance’ (Aiolfi,
2022: 6). This notion of transgression is already present in the work of Ostiguy and
Moffitt and other scholars from the performative approach, whether it is directly like
María Esperanza Casullo (2021: 77) in her discussion of populist leaders as ‘transgressive
figures’ or indirectly in the work of scholars like Lone Sørensen (2021: 58–59, 139–146)
who talks about populism’s reliance on ‘disruptive performances’ or Julia Peetz (2020:
649) who associates populism with ‘performances of outsiderness’. More prominently,
even Laclau (2005a: 228) mobilised the concept of transgression in his claim that ‘the
emergence of the “people” as a historical actor is thus always transgressive vis-à-vis the
situation preceding it. This transgression is the emergence of a new order’.
However, Aiolfi’s work focused primarily on the strategic use of transgression, devel-
oping a typology of transgressive performances based on whether they break interac-
tional, rhetorical, or theatrical norms. Furthermore, his article, very much like other
recent contributions from the performative scholarship engaging with transgressive
practices, tends to suffer from a leader-centric bias that prioritises embodied perfor-
mances of political leaders to more collective forms of transgression (see also Melito,
2024: 2). While he hinted at the possibility of a deeper use of the concept (Aiolfi, 2022:
6), his article, and empirical work on performing transgression (Aiolfi, 2025: 138–169)
remained limited by its focus on embodied performances which constrains transgression
within the frame of the way particular political actors mobilise this transgressive style to
appear different from others.
The very choice of the concept of style by several authors from the performative
approach (Moffitt, 2016: 33; Casullo and Colalongo, 2022: 63; Aiolfi, 2022: 4) has been
met with criticism from their peers from the discursive scholarship who argue that it
comes with the ‘unavoidable connotation’ of being ‘secondary or superficial’ (Stavrakakis

6 Politics 00(0)
et al., 2017: 424–425). We challenge this claim that the concept of style is synonymous
with superficiality, as its use serves as a means for these scholars to analytically distin-
guish form and content in politics while acknowledging their co-constitutive nature. But
while the concept of style has a unique ability to explore the ‘tension between collective
patterns and individual practices’ (Aiolfi, 2025: 52), the performative scholarship tends to
use it in a relatively narrow way that equates it with particular performances and strate-
gies of political communication. We believe that introducing the concept of aesthetics can
be a way to expand the discussions on the dialectics between form and content that are
fundamental to the performative scholarship while also addressing the discursive scholar-
ship’s concern of superficiality by considering form beyond the bias of style towards
individual politicians.
For an aesthetic conception of populism
In this article, we want to explore the wider consequences of conceiving populism as
constructed around transgression, a shift that consolidates the theoretical efforts endeav-
ouring to bridge the gap between discursive and performative approaches to populism. To
develop our argument, this part is divided into two moments. First, building on Rancière
and Foucault, we demonstrate how, beyond the flamboyant bodily performances of char-
ismatic leaders, the very articulation of the people and the elite that characterises pop-
ulism is transgressive of the aesthetic order of politics. Second, we discuss some
consequences of this understanding in the debates on the links between populism, crisis
and institutions. Especially engaging with Laclau, we show how this aesthetic transgres-
sion of performatively constructing ‘people’ and ‘elite’ produces an ‘ontological’ crisis
that resonates with the ontic level of crisis.
People versus elite and transgressive aesthetics
To accomplish this bridging effort, we must move towards an aesthetic notion of trans-
gression. In ordinary language, the word aesthetics is frequently used to refer to a ‘var-
nish’, to a ‘cosmetic’ dimension of reality that does not touch its core. In other occurrences,
it is associated with beauty, or, in a slightly less restrictive way, with artistic expressions.
Even authors who deal with the relationship between aesthetics and politics end up repro-
ducing this trend: Mouffe (2013: 88), for instance, tends to associate aesthetics with art
– even if she focuses on counter-cultural artistic movements. Rancière’s understanding is
very different. As he explains by going back to the roots of the word, aesthetics refers to
the ‘partage du sensible’ – to the sharing or partition of what is sensible (Rancière, 2000a:
12). It relates to one’s sensitiveness, the aptitude to be impressed or affected. This encom-
passes the traditional realm of arts, but by no means is restricted to it (Rancière, 2000a:
27, 71–72). For Rancière, politics is at its core a matter of aesthetics, to what can be seen
and what cannot be seen. The visible and the invisible.
Of course, Rancière’s idea of aesthetics invites further questions that he did not explore.
Rancière’s declared hostility towards sociology is well known. He criticised sociologists’
patronising pretension of unveiling hidden truths to alienated masses, their dismal deter-
minism, and their ‘policing’ will to impose their own labels and classifications on social
reality (Rancière, 2007a: 239; 2009: 572). Nonetheless, authors such as Federico Tarragoni
(2016: 120–124) have argued that this general criticism against sociology is based on an
unfair caricature of Bourdieu’s work and that one can gain a lot by bridging Rancière’s

Zicman de Barros and Aiolfi 7
(2016: 120–124) philosophy with fruitful sociological studies. Furthermore, in contrast to
other discourse theorists, Rancière’s hostility towards sociology would make it harder for
him to think of the dynamics of what elsewhere he called ‘regime of visibility’ or also
‘police order’ (Rancière, 2000a: 30–31; 1995: 142). We are referring to the very set of rules
– Laclau (1999: 102–103; 2000: 76–77) would call the ‘logics’ – establishing what can
appear and that which is repressed, disavowed, foreclosed, hidden, invisible. All in all,
Rancière has difficulties in conceiving of something that will be key in our reflection: that
these very rules can be read ‘aesthetically’. This is because not every rule is clearly, openly
stated. In many cases, it takes part in an implicit grammar. Despite the differences between
Rancière and Foucault (Rancière, 1995: 55–56, 2000b: 89–92), the latter is useful here.
Foucault not only shows us that the rules – he would call them ‘norms’ (Foucault, 2004
[1978]: 58) – driving this ‘partage du sensible’ have a ‘permanent, repetitious, inert, and
self-reproducing’ character (Foucault, 1976: 122–123) but also stresses that they themselves
might be ultimately invisible (Foucault, 1975: 189). This does not mean that these norms
should be equated with aesthetics but rather that reading them ‘aesthetically’ allows us to
understand the conditions of the very possibility of discourse in society.
The question that interests us the most, though, is how the populist discursive articula-
tion of entities such as the ‘people’ and the ‘elite’ can be interpreted as an aesthetic prac-
tice – and a practice that might transgress the rules and limits of what or who can be seen.
A broad and critical appropriation of Rancière’s understanding of aesthetics adds a
new dimension to the notion of transgression. Certainly, one can refer to the transgressive
performances of a political leader, as Ostiguy and Moffitt have done. Indeed, a leader who
breaks with the established rules of ‘proper’ behaviour in politics is aesthetically trans-
gressive – they challenge and transform the limits of what can be seen in politics.
However, populism does not necessarily depend on identifiable leaders. Recent leaderless
‘square movements’ have adopted a populist discourse that pits the 99% against the elite
1% (Gerbaudo, 2017: 17; Zicman de Barros, 2023b: 251). Moreover, the earliest move-
ments that embraced the label ‘populism’ lacked charismatic leadership altogether
(Tarragoni, 2019: 25–26; Vergara, 2020: 224–226). Hence, a broader perspective on aes-
thetic transgression moves beyond leader-centrism, encouraging us to consider what else
might undergo ‘an exodus from invisibility’ (Arditi, 2019: 57). Specifically, it invites one
to think more widely about what populism brings into politics. Sørensen (2021: 129, 144)
says that populist disruptions perform an ‘expository function’. This transgressive disclo-
sure takes place in two combined ways: (1) through the inclusion of political subjects by
the discursive construction of an empty signifier – the ‘people’ – and (2) through expos-
ing the invisible modes of domination by naming a ‘negative’ empty signifier – ‘the elite’.
To understand the first-way populism is transgressive – i.e. how it can bring political
subjects into politics – a key notion is Rancière’s idea of a ‘part of no part’ (Rancière, 1995:
31; Rancière 2012 [2006]: 161). The notion of ‘part of no part’ is intrinsically linked to his
reflections on politics and aesthetics – on politics as a matter of visibility and invisibility.
For Rancière, the ‘part of no part’ refers precisely to those who cannot be seen: subjects
who are a by-product of the symbolic order but remain ignored at its margins. With the
notion of ‘part of no part’, it becomes clearer how Rancière’s understanding of aesthetics
is key in bridging the gap between Laclau’s work and the performative approaches to pop-
ulism. Indeed, whereas Laclau (2005a: 244–249) and Rancière (2021: 100–102) engaged
in public debates that could lead one to think that their approaches are distinguished, their
work is complementary. For instance, that which Rancière names the ‘part of no part’ is in
the vicinity of Laclau’s reflections on what he calls ‘heterogeneity’.

8 Politics 00(0)
Such as Rancière’s ‘part of no part’, the idea of heterogeneity in Laclau’s work refers
to the invisibilised elements that do not fit into the categories structuring the hegemonic
discourse. The word ‘heterogeneity’ to name what does not fit in the symbolic order
appears in Laclau’s work after 2005, in explicit references to Bataille (Laclau, 2005a:
155–156; 2006: 672).1 For Bataille (1989 [1933]: 137, 142), the homogeneous is described
as what is ‘defined and identifiable’, or even ‘measurable’. The homogeneous is what
appears at first sight to social scientists: the dynamics of a well-ruled community, and the
main categories taking part in the ordinary production and reproduction of this commu-
nity (Bataille, 1989 [1933]: 140). By contrast, heterogeneity refers to what is beyond
measurement and production. That ‘accursed part [la part maudite]’ which is ‘incommen-
surable’, ‘unassimilable’ and ‘unproductive’ and somehow puts production in peril, sub-
verting its ordinary dynamics (Bataille, 1976a [1949]: 17; 1989 [1933]: 142). In a
metabolic metaphor, heterogeneity refers to the waste, the residue and the excrements of
society (Bataille, 1970c [1930]: 58–59).
In its different names and configurations, this ‘real’ at the internal margins of the sym-
bolic order has a transgressive dimension. And here, we can understand that although
Ostiguy, Moffitt and Aiolfi, in their work on performance studies, have understood some-
thing important about populism by emphasising that, in addition to the ‘people’ versus
‘elite’ divide, the transgressive style of populist leaders must be taken into account, there
is something else to consider. Populist transgression is not only a matter of style, narrowly
understood as the expression of the political communication of particular politicians.
Transgression includes these micro-political practices, but it must be understood more
broadly – as aesthetic. And although an aesthetic transgression can be expressed in the
embodied performances of leaders – which might frequently be the case –, it also mani-
fests itself when the discursive articulation of the ‘people’ mobilises the invisible, the
subaltern, the heterogeneous, the ‘part of no part’. The call for the ‘people’ constitutes a
political subject by offering a point of affective identification which appeals to isolated
and powerless sectors through a counter-hegemonic narrative of obfuscated agency. It
allows for the worldless to transgressively erupt in the space of appearances, reshape the
limits of the symbolic order and bring dissensus into politics.
That all said, populism is not only aesthetically transgressive for bringing silenced
voices into the public sphere in the name of the ‘people’. Just as the articulation of the
‘people’ incorporates invisible subalterns in the symbolic order, the discursive construc-
tion of the other, ‘negative’, empty signifier of the populist antagonism – the ‘elite’ – also
involves bringing something out of invisibility. By naming the ‘elite’, populism provides
a representation of the invisible underlying rules that establish what can be seen and what
remains invisible. While populist discourse does not – and cannot – capture the ‘real’ dif-
fuse and systemic roots of the norms ruling the ‘partage du sensible’ and silencing mar-
ginalised perspectives (Laclau, 2006: 657–658), the discursive articulation of ‘elite’
offers a symbolic embodiment for what Foucault (1976: 121) called their ‘terminal
forms’. Whether they take the shape of the ‘establishment’, the ‘1%’ or ‘la casta’, pop-
ulism gives a face to dominant political norms. It lays bare the modes of domination,
exposing their very existence. As such, in parallel to the ‘people’ serving as a way to
foster unity and change, the ‘elite’ serves as a point of identification for popular mobilisa-
tion, acting as a catalyst, an impetus to take action.
Understood in this way, aesthetic transgression not only captures the embodied per-
formances of particular leaders but also accounts for the discursive challenge that pop-
ulism poses to the political status quo. As such, the idea of aesthetic transgression

Zicman de Barros and Aiolfi 9
becomes the common denominator between what the discursive school of populism
examines – i.e. the articulation of the antagonism between the people and the elite – and
what scholars from a performative perspective are concerned with – that is, the specific
features related to the style of the leaders who mobilise populism. It thus connects these
two strands of critical scholarship by showing that they tackle different aspects of the
same transgressive phenomenon.
Aesthetic crisis and institutions
Whereas the argument that populism involves an aesthetic transgression bridges the gap
between discursive and performative approaches by showing how the articulation of the
antagonism between ‘people’ and ‘elite’ relies on transgression, it also solves an issue
with Moffitt’s framework. As we have indicated, whereas Moffitt’s approach is insightful,
the three features he associates with populism – (1) the ‘people’ versus the ‘elite’, (2) ‘bad
manners’ and (3) the performance of crisis – end up being simply juxtaposed, and may
even seem rather arbitrary. By moving beyond the stylistic idea of ‘bad manners’ and giv-
ing the notion of transgression a central role in populism, we integrate these three dimen-
sions. First, as we have seen, the idea of populism as transgressive aesthetics allows us to
grasp that the very articulation of the empty signifiers ‘people’ and ‘elite’ is transgressive.
Furthermore, this broader understanding of aesthetic transgression illuminates the con-
nection between populism and the performance of crisis.
Moffitt was not the first to connect populism and crisis. Indeed, associating populism
with crisis is commonplace in political studies (Stavrakakis et al., 2018: 12). On this
topic, however, three perspectives stand out. The first, traditional approach was adopted
by authors like Kenneth Roberts (1995: 113, 2015: 141) and Kurt Weyland (1999: 395),
who present populism as being caused by economic or political crises. To some extent,
the second perspective presented by Moffitt reversed this traditional approach. He has
defended that populism is not – or at least it is not only – a by-product for a crisis, but
instead should be thought of as actively producing crises. As Thomás Zicman de Barros
and Miguel Lago say, Moffitt’s reflections allow us to understand a new populist proverb
stating that ‘the best way to weather the storm is to be the storm’ (Zicman de Barros and
Lago, 2022: 9). Inspired by Gramsci’s (1978 [1934], Q13 §17) comments that economic
crises do not determine political crises, Colin Hay (1995: 74) had developed the opposi-
tion between ‘failure’ and ‘crisis’ – which correspond, respectively, to any structural issue
within a system and the symbolic mediation of these failures. Building on this, Moffitt
(2016: 120) claimed that populism relied on the choice of a specific failure that would be
performatively turned into a crisis within the populist articulation of politics.
As some have interpreted it, Laclau developed a third approach to crises from a post-
foundational perspective (Stavrakakis et al., 2018: 16). Not far from the distinction
between failure and crisis, he taught us that every crisis has two dimensions: an ontic
dimension and a so-called ‘ontological’ dimension (see also Howarth, 2004: 268). When
one talks about an ‘economic crisis’, a ‘political crisis’ or even a ‘sanitary crisis’, one is
referring to the ontic dimension of a crisis. A crisis that has a given object, a crisis that to
a large extent can be symbolised. There is something more in a crisis, though – and here
Laclau’s notion of dislocation is key (Laclau, 1990: 39; Stavrakakis et al., 2018: 15).
Whereas dislocation appeared in Laclau’s work before his reflections on subalternity and
heterogeneity, it already grasped something of the malaise caused by this extime ‘real’
always latently troubling the symbolic order (Biglieri and Perelló, 2011: 54–56). In this

10 Politics 00(0)
sense, the idea of dislocation shows an ‘ontological’ dimension of crisis – to recall the
expression used by Myriam Revault d’Allonnes (2012: 53): an ‘endless crisis’ that marks
a world without foundations. There are anguish-provoking ‘ontological insecurities’ in
modernity (Steele and Homolar, 2019: 215). As such, populism emerges as a way to deal
with dislocations, providing an ontic content to cope with an ‘ontological’ discontent
(Stavrakakis et al., 2018: 16).
From our understanding of the transgressive aesthetics of populism, the notion of cri-
sis gains a new contour, bridging performative and discursive approaches in another way.
From Moffitt, we take the idea that populism produces crises. From Laclau, we under-
stand that this crisis has an ‘ontological’ dimension. In a nutshell, we argue that crisis and
transgression overlap – that crisis is a consequence of populism’s aesthetic transgression.
The ‘ontological’ crisis emerges because the populist articulation of the ‘people’ versus
the ‘elite’ transforms the symbolic order, messing up the points of reference through
which one used to interpret the world (Zicman de Barros, 2024: 8). The transgressive
irruption – or ‘disruption’ – of the heterogeneous in the public sphere performs ‘an insur-
rection at the level of ontology’ (Butler, 2004: 33). And something equivalent takes place
when one names the underlying invisible rules that guide the ‘partage du sensible’.
Indeed, the connection between ontic and ‘ontological’ dimensions of crisis gets even
clearer if one thinks of the act of naming the ‘elite’. In brief, the ontic crises that Moffitt
says populism produces – the ‘spectacularization of a failure’ (Moffitt, 2016: 120) that
names a wrong and brings up new problems to be debated in the political arena – are
aesthetically transgressive in themselves, and always have ‘ontological’ implications. All
in all, by transgressing and unsettling the rules of what can be seen in politics, populism
transforms the frame through which one ‘reads’ reality. This explains why populist out-
bursts are frequently experienced as surprising and disquieting.
These comments on populist aesthetic transgression and crisis also help one to rethink
another common trope in populism studies: the opposition between populism and institu-
tionalism. Anti-populist scholars have frequently stressed that populism threatens liberal
democratic institutions (Arato, 2013: 161; Urbinati, 2019: 8). From a more sympathetic
position towards populism, Laclau (2005b: 45) himself used to claim that the populist
logic would be at the antipodes of the logic of institutionalism. From the idea of politics
as a matter of aesthetics, we believe these claims can be reassessed. Drawing on Foucault’s
(1975: 189) idea that modes of domination themselves can be tacit and invisible, an aes-
thetic perspective understands institutions beyond buildings with staff and stamps.
Institutions are more than branches of government and codified laws. Institutions are the
written and unwritten rules of society, rules establishing what can appear and what cannot
appear in politics. Therefore, as a transgressive force, populism would indeed be able to
challenge the institutions by taking these rules out of invisibility by naming them, and by
transforming the limits of the symbolic order – by transforming the rules of the game.
Emancipatory versus reactionary aesthetic transgressions
As we have argued, the articulation of the ‘people’ against the ‘elite’ that includes subjects
that could not appear in politics and exposes underlying modes of domination is trans-
gressive. A question remains, however, on the normative and ethical implications of this
transgressive articulation. While some mainstream authors present populism as inher-
ently exclusionary and undemocratic (Arato, 2013: 156–160, 2019: 466; Urbinati, 2019:
4–5), others argue it is fundamentally inclusionary and radically democratic (Biglieri and

Zicman de Barros and Aiolfi 11
Cadahia, 2021, 40; Tarragoni, 2019: 26–30; Vergara, 2020: 237–241). Laclau and
Rancière seem to indicate that populism can take both forms. However, both have grap-
pled with the challenge of distinguishing between emancipatory and reactionary expres-
sions of the ‘part of no-part’ – and, by extension, populism itself. Laclau (2004: 135)
acknowledges that, from a post-foundational perspective, there may be a lack of ‘ade-
quate theoretical resources’ to make such a distinction. Similarly, Rancière (2021: 101)
argues that it is not always possible to draw a clear-cut line between these two forms of
populism. Despite these theoretical challenges, both thinkers remain committed to an
emancipatory project and recognise that making this distinction is essential for envision-
ing the possibilities of radical democratic politics.
We argue that our aesthetic approach helps navigate the ambiguity between emancipa-
tory and reactionary forms of populism in two interconnected ways: by situating the issue
within the realm of aesthetic judgement and by using queer aesthetics to evaluate whether
a transgression remains faithful to questioning established identities or ultimately rein-
forces them. While Rancière connects aesthetic and political judgement, it was Hannah
Arendt (1961: 222) who laid the groundwork for extending the logic of aesthetic judge-
ment into the political realm. For Arendt, such judgements are not mere expressions of
subjective taste but are rooted in a ‘community sense’ – grounded in shared sociability
and attentiveness to the plurality that defines society (Arendt, 1989 [1970]: 70–74).
Although her contributions to aesthetic criticism were fragmentary, they provide impor-
tant insights into how judgement operates in political and social contexts – and, as we will
see, they resonate with key ideas in queer theory.
Building on the idea of aesthetic-political judgement and its links to queer theory, this
section will be divided into two parts. First, it will discuss how queer aesthetics, by chal-
lenging fixed identities and norms, helps us understand emancipatory transgressions and
their role in creating a more inclusive, radical democratic populism. Second, it will exam-
ine how the mobilisation of the heterogeneous can also take reactionary forms, using
transgression to reinforce exclusion and social hierarchies.
Emancipatory transgressions
How can one judge whether the transgressive aesthetics of a populist experience is eman-
cipatory? And why might queer theory be helpful in addressing this question? It is impor-
tant to stress here the transgressive dimension that inhabits queer theory from its inception.
The very etymology of queer, from the German quer, evokes what is transversal,
transpasses and transects. No wonder the prefix trans-, so central to queer theory, is also
present in transgression (see also Devenney, 2020: 92; Biglieri, 2021: 461). The trans-
gression that inhabits queer theory and queer aesthetics, with emancipatory potential that
goes far beyond gender studies, is that which troubles the categories through which one
reads reality. Queer transgression shows the aporias of our discourses, what does not fit,
and transpasses the borders defining our own identities, challenging them (Butler, 1990:
186). A challenge that is made in the name of inclusion and equality, constantly creating
openings for marginalised subalternised subjects to enter the public sphere.
The embrace of the uncanny, which is central to queer theory, finds echo in the aes-
thetic-political judgements of Arendt, Rancière, and even Bataille. Arendt (2005 [1953]:
1:385; 1978 [1971]: 384–85) values aesthetic experiences and artworks that could be
called sublime. She is interested in experiences that provoke a tension between the famil-
iar and the strange, unsettling the ‘community sense’ and making it more inclusive and

12 Politics 00(0)
open to plurality. Arendt’s idea of a ‘right to have rights’, the fundamental claim asserted
when the worldless – those excluded from the space of appearances – irrupt into the pub-
lic sphere, closely aligns with the transgressive character of queer aesthetics (Arendt,
1998 [1958]: 199; Butler, 2015: 77, 80). The appearance of marginalised groups chal-
lenges the existing boundaries of the symbolic order, demanding inclusion in ways that
ultimately reshape the space of appearances itself.
Rancière explicitly highlights the disruptive potential of art to break down given
hierarchies. He had already declared his enthusiasm for the idea of ‘queerising’ his
theory, and indeed his focus on the continuous disruption of stable identities and norms
– whether through art or political action – closely aligns with queer theory’s emphasis
on the constant questioning of identities (Rancière, 2008: 29). Not far from Arendt, he
understands that politics properly speaking only exists as such when the ‘part of no
part’ irrupts in the public sphere, bringing forward a claim for equality (Rancière,
1995: 63–64, 127, 2004: 299).
Bataille’s work also anticipated insights from queer transgressive aesthetics in its chal-
lenge to fixed identities and normative boundaries. In a dozen articles on aesthetic criti-
cism, he valued uncanny artistic experiences, embracing the grotesque, the formless and
the abject to challenge conventional notions of beauty and harmony (Bataille, 1970a
[1929]: 210). By focusing on disproportion and decomposition, Bataille (1970b [1930]:
253; 1970a [1930]: 255) celebrated aesthetics that were unsettling and provocative, delib-
erately disrupting traditional forms. Overall, heterogeneity was a source of excitement for
him, as he saw homogeneity as tedious, dull, monotonous and automatic. True human
existence, he argued, could only be realised through the passionate, heated and tumultu-
ous movement of the heterogeneous (Bataille, 1970e [1939]: 228).2
Oliver Marchart’s reflections on ‘conflictual aesthetics’ offers a useful framework for
understanding the role of transgression in emancipatory queer populism. He distinguishes
between an ‘aesthetics of conflict’, which draws clear lines between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and
a ‘conflicting aesthetics’, which destabilises these very boundaries (Marchart, 2019: 23;
Zicman de Barros, 2022: 81). Queer aesthetics aligns with this ‘conflicting aesthetics’,
encompassing practices that do not ‘fit’, of ‘non-belonging’ (Yates, 2024: 10–11) – sub-
lime practices that not only trouble the symbolic order but invite one to welcome this
‘trouble’, constantly questioning who belongs in the political community.
This transgressive character of queer ‘conflicting aesthetics’ often leads them to be
perceived as threatening (Butler, 2024: 1). The mere presence of subalternised sectors –
workers, black and indigenous people, women and non-binary gender minorities – who
dare to transgress norms and move out of invisibility is inherently shocking. By stepping
into the public sphere as the ‘people’ – and ‘giving a name to obscurity’, that is, the ‘elite’,
– they are seen as an ‘unknown and dangerous force’ (Bataille, 1989 [1933]: 142; see also
Gramsci, 2021 [1934], Q25 §1). Their irruption is often experienced as ‘violence, exces-
siveness, delirium, madness’ (Bataille, 1989 [1933]: 142), even when, ‘objectively’, no
violent means have ever been deployed. However, as Laclau and Mouffe argue, emanci-
patory populism does not undermine liberal democracy. Instead, it radicalises it by expos-
ing its blind spots and extending its inclusiveness in the name of the ‘people’ (Laclau and
Mouffe, 2001: xv; Mouffe 1995 [1991]: 20).
This queer ‘conflicting aesthetics’ generates a paradoxical counter-hegemonic hegem-
ony – a form of hegemony that questions its own foundations, refusing to settle into a new
stable order. By embracing queer aesthetic transgression, emancipatory populism –
which, inspired by Mark Devenney (2020: 92), one might call trans-populism – fosters a

Zicman de Barros and Aiolfi 13
form of radical democratic politics that remains open to plurality, continuously reshaping
the contours of the political community. This invites an ongoing process of challenging
established norms and creating new spaces for inclusion, resisting the temptation of clo-
sure and certainty.
Reactionary transgressions
While queer theory and aesthetics provide us with tools to judge the emancipatory poten-
tial of transgression, it is important to recognise that the inclusion of the ‘part of no-part’
does not always lead to emancipation (Laclau, 2005a: 246–247; Rancière, 2021: 102). As
Rancière, (2007b: 99; 2008: 29) observes, the entry of the part of no-part into politics
carries with it the constant risk that its inclusion will merely lead to the counting of those
who were previously uncounted, to their assimilation into the police order (see also
Butler, 2024: 134–36). In this process, what appears to be a transgression may end up
reinforcing the established order. Moreover, reactionary populist movements can also
mobilise the power of the heterogeneous to destabilise the existing symbolic order, but
doing this without an openness to plurality, a willingness to embrace the uncanny – cen-
tral to queer aesthetics – or to broaden inclusion and challenge hierarchies. Instead, they
reinforce exclusion and consolidate existing power structures.
Lasse Thomassen (2005: 301) has pointed out that ‘normatively, there is[n’t] anything
inherently progressive about heterogeneity’. Thomassen reminds us that, in Marx’s tradi-
tion, heterogeneity is associated with the lumpen – a social group excluded from the rela-
tions of production that was seen as ‘a regressive force and as the foundation for the
conservative discourse of Bonapartism’ (Thomassen, 2005: 301). Taking up Marx’s
expression, which referred to the lumpen as the ‘refuse of all classes’ (Marx, 1979 [1852]:
149; Arendt, 1967 [1951]: 107), Arendt called this group the mob. The mob is described
as excluded both from society and from political representation, emerging violently in the
political sphere (Arendt, 1967 [1951]: 108). Moreover, the mob tends to fall into the
temptation of the ‘strong man’ or the ‘great leader’ (Arendt, 1967 [1951]: 107). It fosters
resentment and moral panic among its members towards an antagonistic other (Arendt,
1967 [1951]: 107, 392).
Even Bataille (1970d [1933]: 161) defined fascism as ‘total heterogeneous power
[pouvoir hétérogène total]’. As he admitted, Bataille, 1976b [1958]: 461) flirted with fas-
cism for its mobilising power. Soon, however, he ended up conceding that the fascist
leader’s mobilisation was limited (Bataille, 1947: 521–522). Reactionary forces develop
in the tension between enjoying the transgression of the law and ultimately reaffirming
this law (Bataille, 1987 [1957]: 68; Butler, 1990: 103–104; Foucault, 1976: 61–62). All in
all, the fascist leader is a heterogeneous actor in a movement towards homogenisation,
trying to reunify the community, and producing new exclusions – new heterogeneities –
to be repressed (Bataille, 1989 [1933]: 145–148, 153–154).
Judging these practices from the perspective of queer theory, one can say that reaction-
ary transgressions invert the logic of queer transgression. In other words, to the extent that
it questions the established symbolic order, reactionary populism is counter-hegemonic.
However, it is not faithful to its counter-hegemonic character. To reappropriate Gramsci’s
expression, it is a ‘revolution-restoration’ (Gramsci, 1978 [1934], Q13 §27), a form of
‘reactionary revolt’ (Palheta, 2022: 25) that seeks to install a reinforced close hegemony.
In a pure expression of an ‘aesthetics of conflict’ (Marchart, 2019: 23), the mob’s dis-
course tries to trace thick and solid lines separating ‘us’ from ‘them’. As such, it seeks to

14 Politics 00(0)
reaffirm modes of domination and social hierarchies and attempts to silence other under-
privileged subalternised subjects. This policing of boundaries contrasts starkly with the
openness to indeterminacy found in queer aesthetics.
It is important to stress that when reactionary populism refers to a ‘negative’ empty
signifier such as ‘elite’, it also disruptively exposes some invisible rules structuring the
‘partage du sensible’. But while it may point at dysfunctions of liberal democracy, reac-
tionary populism not only relies on the process of scapegoating that the mainstream litera-
ture mistakenly associates with all forms of populism, it also creates a connection between
excluded sectors and the ‘elite’. Whether these outgroups are directly framed as the ‘elite’
itself, which is for instance the case in the conspiratorial tropes of antisemitism, or
whether the ‘elite’ is framed as passively complacent or actively complicit in enabling
these outgroups to threaten the homogeneity of the ‘people’, far-right political actors have
understood the appeal of populism’s transgressive aesthetics to further their reactionary
agenda.
Destabilising the ‘partage du sensible’ this way thus aims to rehabilitate ideas banned
from the public discourse like racism, islamophobia, sexism, homophobia, antisemitism,
and so on. Often without explicitly advocating for their return, reactionary politicians
connect these political taboos of liberal democracy with the established hegemony to
slowly undermine the norms upon which they rest and thus erode their public acceptance.
By doing so, reactionary populism threatens the very foundations of liberal democracy,
praising the mob as alleged ‘taboo-breakers’ who fight for ‘free speech’ against ‘thought
police’ and ‘political correctness’ silencing their voices (Mondon and Winter, 2020: 75,
81, 92). Once again, however, this exodus from invisibility is not emancipatory, as the
rules they question are precisely those loosely keeping far-right discriminatory discourses
at bay (Zicman de Barros and Lago, 2022: 102–109). All in all, the mob’s transgressive
character is limited. Its appeal to transgression ends up only feeding the fantasy of the
triumph of the will of those who limitlessly do whatever they want, however they want,
whenever they want, disregarding others.
Whereas there might be a grey zone in the frontier between distinct expressions of
populism, drawing on queer theory, we have sought above to provide elements for a dif-
ferentiation between emancipatory and reactionary aesthetically transgressive articula-
tions of the ‘people’. On the one hand, in the case of emancipatory populism, one is
dealing with subalternised subjects that enter and reshape the space of appearances to
welcome new beginnings, a constant questioning of naturalised social hierarchies. It does
not challenge liberal democracy but seeks to radicalise it. On the other hand, reactionary
populism aesthetic transgression reinforces the discourse of the mob, seeks to build gated
communities, and represses vulnerable subjects.
Conclusion
This article attempted to consolidate the discursive-performative approach to studying
populism. By relying on Rancière’s concept of aesthetics, we argued that a possible way
to connect the discursive and the performative strands was to claim that populism involves
a transgressive aesthetics. For Rancière, aesthetics is a matter of what can be seen and
what remains invisible – and, as we claim, populist discourses would transgress the limits
of this regime of visibility and invisibility.
The idea of aesthetics allowed us to move beyond stylistic features such as Ostiguy’s
‘flaunting of the low’ and Moffitt’s ‘bad manners’ and give a more central position to the

Zicman de Barros and Aiolfi 15
idea of transgression. Beyond the transgressive style of populist leaders, we argued that
populism is transgressive in two ways. First, the articulation of the empty signifier such as
the ‘people’ brings subaltern subjects into politics, breaking with the norms of what or who
can appear in the public sphere. Second, by naming the ‘elite’, populism denounces the
invisible ‘grammar’ of domination: it challenges the sedimentation of modes of domination
by ‘giving a name to obscurity’. This understanding also allows us to grasp how populism
is related to the idea of crisis because, by transgressing the norms of what can be seen, pop-
ulism transforms the way one interprets reality, triggering an ‘ontological’ crisis.
The article concludes with a necessary differentiation between emancipatory and
reactionary expressions of populism. Although less clear-cut in political practice, this
distinction is fundamental and necessary to understand the way populism affects democ-
racy. On the one hand, we argue that emancipatory populism involves a ‘conflicting
aesthetics’ that constantly troubles the symbolic order to incorporate subaltern sectors,
radicalising liberal democracy. Recovering and being faithful to the very root of the
word transgression, one is dealing with a queer trans-populism whose aesthetic practices
challenge identities and inequalities. On the other hand, we claim that ultimately reac-
tionary populism is not committed to its transgression. It is aesthetically transgressive to
incorporate the discourse of what Arendt called the ‘mob’ – a reactionary discourse that
reinforces modes of domination.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article: This research was funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology of Portugal under
the project ‘Populism, Demagoguery, and Rhetoric in Historical Perspective’ (2022.05060.PTDC), as well as
by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme through the Marie Skłodowska-
Curie grant agreement no. 945380.
ORCID iD
Thomás Zicman de Barros https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1657-6939
Théo Aiolfi https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6146-1332
Notes
1. In addition to Laclau’s references to Bataille, it is likewise possible to glean insights for an aesthetic
theory of populism from his reappropriation of Gramsci’s notion of subalternity (Gramsci, 2021 [1934],
Q25 §1, 4; Laclau 2001: 9–10), also linking it to Marx’s theory of the masses (Marx, 1976 [1847]: 211)
and subaltern studies (Spivak, 1988 [1985]: 271). The ideas of heterogeneity and the ‘part of no-part’ also
find correlates in Arendt’s (and Heidegger’s) idea of the ‘worldless’ (Arendt, 1978 [1971]: 19, 29; Arendt,
1998 [1958]: 115, 118, 201), Butler’s concept of the ‘abject’ (Butler, 1990: 23; 1993: 3; 1998: 284–285),
and even Lacan’s notion of the real (Biglieri and Perelló, 2011: 60; Lacan, 2006 [1969]: 224).
2. Bataille’s keenness would even rouse Foucault, who otherwise seemed rather sceptical and hopeless
towards the idea of emancipation (Foucault, 1963: 755–756; 1976: 210–211).
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Author biographies
Thomás Zicman de Barros is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Ethics, Politics and Society
(CEPS) at the University of Minho and a Research Associate at the Centre for Political Research (CEVIPOF),
Sciences Po Paris. He has written extensively on the interface between political theory and psychoanalysis. His
current research examines the articulation of subaltern, queer, and populist studies from a historical
perspective.
Théo Aiolfi is a Junior Professor at the University of Burgundy as part of the Centre Interlangues Texte, Image,
Langage (TIL) and an Associate Researcher at the research group Echo: Media, Culture and Politics at the Vrije
Universiteit Brussel (VUB). His interdisciplinary research lies at the intersection of political science, commu-
nication, and performance studies. He focuses on populism, performativity, style, and politics as performance,
with an emphasis on far-right politics and political leadership.