Slavoj Žižek is frequently portrayed as the paradigmatic antipopulistthinker. Yet he is also routinely criticized for endorsing populistcauses in contemporary politics, not least after his infamous remarksconcerning Donald Trump during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Thisarticle aims to approach this supposed contradiction by examining Žižek’stheory of populism. Rather than reading his debate with Ernesto Laclau asprimarily a confrontation between reformist populism and revolutionarycommunism, the article approaches it as a fundamental disagreementover the relationship between theory and political practice. Through aclose reading of Žižek’s engagement with Laclau, the analysis revealshow Žižek critiques what he perceives as a fetishistic tendency in Laclau’sthought which ultimately produces a deficient account of universalizationand results in the domestication of the constitutive negativity marked bythe Lacanian objet a.

Denna artikel tar sin utgångspunkt i hur retoriken under moderniteten beskrivs som ett hot mot föreställningsförmågan och det genialiska ska-pandet i syfte att kunna ställa frågan om retorikens förmåga att tänka det nya. Mot denna splittring av den retoriska traditionen vänds sedan blicken mot strukturalismens reintegrering av retoriken, hur denna har grundats i en dunkel relation mellan språkligt och ekonomiskt värde samt hur i syn-nerhet Ernesto Laclau har hanterat denna fråga. Via Laclaus begrepp den tomma betecknaren och Marx dito den allmänna ekvivalenten utreds sedan tre potentiella läsningar av Laclaus teori om retoricitet och språkligt skapande. Genom dessa läsningar framträder risken med att modellera en språk- och retoriksyn på värdeformen, inte minst eftersom ett otillräckligt erkännande av denna modell också potentiellt underminerar Laclaus begrepp om retoricitet.

This article takes as its starting point the modern description of rhetoric as a threat to imagination in order to ask the question concer-ning rhetoric's ability to think the new. Against the modern fragmentation of the rhetorical tradition, the focus then turns to the structuralist reinteg-ration of rhetoric, how this has been based on an obscure relationship between linguistic and economic value, and how in particular Ernesto Laclau has dealt with this issue. Through Laclau's concept of the empty signifier and Marx's concept of the general equivalent, three potential rea-dings of Laclau's theory of rhetoric and linguistic creation are then explo-red. These readings reveal the danger of modelling an understanding of language and rhetoric on the value-form, not least since an insufficient recognition of this model also undermines Laclau's concept of rhetoric.

This article approaches a potential tension in the work of Slavoj Žižek between his critique of communist ideology and his endorsement of the communist idea. The aim is to show how this endorsement, in effect, emerged out of Žižek’s sustained engagement with communist ideology. The article captures this transformation by focusing on his understanding of the notion of the idea and the ways in which ideology can be transgressed. The conclusion is drawn that in moving from a Kantian to a Hegelian notion of the idea, Žižek also leaves behind his initial Beckettian Leninism in favor of an understanding of revolution that no longer depends on the heroic act of a subject but on the immanent logic of the communist idea. 

Članek obravnava potencialno napetost v delu Slavoja Žižka med njegovo kritiko ko-munistične ideologije in njegovim zavzemanjem za komunistično idejo. Cilj je pokazati, kako je ta podpora dejansko nastala iz Žižkovega nenehnega ukvarjanja s komunistično ideologijo. Članek to preobrazbo zajame tako, da se osredotoči na Žižkovo razume-vanje pojma ideje in na načine, na katere je mogoče ideologijo preseči. Sklepna ugoto-vitev je, da Žižek s prehodom od kantovskega k heglovskemu pojmu ideje zapusti tudi svoj začetni beckettovski leninizem v korist razumevanja revolucije, ki ni več odvisno od herojskega dejanja subjekta, temveč od imanentne logike same komunistične ideje.

Denna artikel tar sin utgångspunkt i det skifte inom retorikämnets demokratiförståelse där ett agonistiskt eller antagonistiskt perspektiv alltmer kommit att ersätta det konsensusinriktade demokratibegrepp som tidigare varit dominerande. Mer specifikt handlar det om hur denna förändrade utgångspunkt påverkar analysen av populistisk retorik då den, inom ramen för detta nya perspektiv, inte längre kan avfärdas som otvetydigt antidemokratisk. Artikeln tar sig an denna fråga genom en läsning av två tänkare av antagonismen, Slavoj Žižek och Ernesto Laclau, samt deras diskussion över populismen. Genom exempel hämtade från Nya Moderaternas retoriska förvandling under tiden i Allians för Sverige ämnar artikeln att, ur Žižeks och Laclaus respektive tänkande, utvinna två motsatta perspektiv på hur vi kan förstå retoriciteten hos det politiskas antagonistiska ontologi. Genom att, likt Laclau, lägga fokus på katakresen eller, likt Žižek, på ironin, kan en antagonistiskt orienterad retorik utveckla två motsatta perspektiv på populismens relation till demokratin. 

This article takes its starting point in the shift in how democracy is understood within Scandinavian rhetorical studies, where an agonistic or an antagonistic perspective has come to surpass a previously dominating consensus-oriented notion of democracy. The article investigates how this transformation has influenced the rhetorical analysis of populism since it can no longer be dismissed as purely anti-democratic. The article approaches this question through a reading of two thinkers of the antagonism, Slavoj Žižek and Ernesto Laclau, and their discussion concerning populism. Through examples gathered from the rhetorical transformation of Swedish Conservative Party Moderaterna, the article aims to extract, out of Žižek’s and Laclau’s respective work, two different perspectives on how to understand the rhetoricity constitutive of the antagonistic ontology of the political. By focusing on the catachresis or irony, a rhetorical tradition committed to thinking the antagonism can develop two opposing views on how populism relates to democracy.

This article investigates the ambiguous status of rhetoric, situated between proper philosophy and mere sophistry, through Alan Badiou’s three exemplary f igures of thought: the philosopher, the anti-philosopher, and the sophist. With the recent return of the sophist in politics in the form of populist politicians, contemporary rhetorical studies have expressed a need for the discipline to reconsider its alliance with relativist sophistics. However, by studying Badiou’s three exemplary f igures, and relating them to his understanding of the three forms of negation, the article explores a possible rift between sophistical rhetoric and anti-philosophical populism that complicates prevalent understandings of the relationship between rhetoric, phi-losophy, and sophistics. Finally, the article brings up some issues concerning how to f it exemplarity in general, and the three exemplary f igures in particular, into the framework of Badiou’s entire philosophy and discusses how to potentially counter-act these limitations.

Dieser Artikel untersucht den zweideutigen Status der Rhetorik, der zwischen echter Philosophie und bloßer Sophisterei angesiedelt ist, anhand von Alan Badious drei exemplarischen Denkfiguren: dem Philosophen, dem Anti-Philosophen und dem Sophisten. Mit der jüngsten Rückkehr des Sophisten in die Politik in Form popu-listischer Politiker hat die zeitgenössische Rhetorikforschung die Notwendigkeit zum Ausdruck gebracht, dass die Disziplin ihr Bündnis mit der relativistischen So-phistik überdenkt. Indem Badious drei exemplarische Figuren untersucht und sie mit seinem Verständnis der drei Formen der Negation in Beziehung gesetzt werden, untersucht der Artikel eine mögliche Kluft zwischen sophistischer Rhetorik und an-tiphilosophischem Populismus, die das vorherrschende Verständnis der Beziehung zwischen Rhetorik, Philosophie und Sophistik verkompliziert. Schließlich wirft der Artikel einige Fragen dazu auf, wie die Exemplarität im Allgemeinen und die drei exemplarischen Figuren im Besonderen in den Rahmen von Badious gesamter Philo-sophie eingeordnet werden können, und erörtert, wie man diesen Einschränkungen möglicherweise entgegenwirken kann.