Tout pour le peuple, rien par le peuple: una crítica al populismo de Chantal Mouffe

Abstract

Chantal Mouffe’s theoretical-political work can be read from two registers. On the one hand, her proposal for an agonist democracy, capable of shaking the ossification and lethargy that afflict our mass liberal republics, is worthy of note, through an adequate processing of the conflict and an expansion of pluralism that extends citizen agency beyond traditional formats. On the other hand, the ideological bias, the inability to account for the constitutive pluralism of contemporary society and the divorce with the historical evidence of actually existing populism raise doubts about Mouffean left-wing populism as a vehicle for popular sovereignty and an alternative for radical democratization. In this last direction, this text will give an account of the contradictions between the presumptions of the Mouffean populist approach and the autocratic Venezuelan drift. Wagering on the collective construction of an expanded, post-liberal and non-populist democratization, for the challenges of the present.