Affects and Manipulation. From the Peronist Experience to the Theory of Populism

Abstract

The paper analyzes the link between affects and manipulations as it has been conceived by on of the canonical approaches to the Peronist phenomenon –that of Gino Germani– and by Ernesto Laclau’s theory of populism. From that perspective, it elaborates a series of conceptual precisions that establish different aspects of the debates raised by both works and interrogate the conceptual status of affection in the processes of subjectivation. Moreover, some of the premises of Jacques Lacan’s thought are analyzed by critically reviewing not only those perspectives that describe populism as democracy’s other due to the supposed manipulative dimension of the leader, but also Laclau’s himself considerations, whose weighting of the affects as the way of explaining collective identities seems to imply the vanishing of the singularity of the subjects, thus reopening the connection between authoritarianism and populism.