Laclau and Populism. Rhetorical Discourse as a Construction of ‘the People’ or as a Manifestation of a Shared Identity?

The aim of this article is to examine and discuss the hypothesis put forth by Ernesto Laclau in his On Populist Reason (2005) that the identity of a group or community is constructed rhetorically through the act of naming, whereby it universalises a particular demand. Conversely, it will be argued that this process serves to reaffirm a pre-existing identity. The aforementioned identity is constituted by the way in which individuals conceptualise what it means to be human. This encompasses the image of being human that informs individuals’ expectations and experiences, as well as their behaviours.