NETWORKS AND POPULISMS / DIVISIONS AND STITCHES – A VIEW FROM EUROPE.
GUDRUN FILIPSKA
(Published in the Fourth Today’s Documents ‘Stitch in Time’ Catalogue.Today Art Museum 2019).
'At my old age I am not afraid of anything'. Ernest Laclau, last interview.(1) Ernest Laclau made the statement above in his last interview with La Nación in 2014. Diego Sehinkman questions Laclau on Cristina Kirchner's political model in Argentina, in relation to his ideas of political antagonism, citing an example where, during a protest in 2011, the Argentinian congress invited passers-by to spit on photographs of controversial journalists (2). Laclau concedes that this was perfectly possible. The act of spitting here, as an example of a tipping point toward violence, is one that has been replicated recently by a number of contemporary western governments. Donald Trump has incited his followers to violence on a number of occasions, notably against Muslim Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (3). The Polish government continues its anti-women, anti-gay rhetoric, the Hungarian government has incited hate against Jews and migrants through numerous billboard and propaganda campaigns, and 'Operation Vaken' a British government anti-illegal immigrant propaganda campaign, involving slogans written on 'patrol' vans, fuelled racism and distrust of immigrants and asylum seekers creating the atmosphere which contributed to the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) (4). Other Latin American leaders including Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, have used these techniques of incited violence, as did European fascists in the 1930s. For Laclau, division is necessary. Tension is essential as a component of an effective political system, particularly as seen in his writing with Chantal Mouffe in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy published in 1985. But crucially for Laclau these are 'administered antagonisms' (5) overseen and contained by institutions and bureaucratic frameworks. In a technological age where state bound democracy as a 'holding' concept is no longer as valid as perhaps it once was – the tipping points and moments of government licensed antagonism (the spitting incident included) need some re-thinking. The new political order of things, characterised by the de-industrialization of the economy and the attendant powers of global technology companies opens up a space to re-look at a number of Laclau's ideas. Firstly his view of the working class as the non a priori agents of radical change and revolution (a controversial idea amongst 'traditional' Marxists) (6) has in all probability been accelerated over the last decade through the use of social media and smart technologies which – under the guise of creating a bifurcation of choice actually homogenise and stultify – poses a problem for Laclau's positioning of 'populism'as I will explore, regarding governments dis-ability to pull back from violent tipping points and contain moments of violence and antagonism that emergent populisms may contain. Laclau was criticised in his later years for writing and commenting on the left wing governments of South America, Argentina particularly, from his 'armchair' in England where he was Professor of Political Theory at the University of Essex – these criticisms by young theorists point to a wider dichotomy between younger generations and the ‘post second world war generation’ of which Laclau was part. The idea of an older generation of left leaning academics no longer having fear, seems rather jarring and speaks to a panic in younger generations, not to be abandoned to the ravages of climate change, to a rising right wing, increasing food prices and higher property prices. Younger generations do feel abandoned and betrayed. The proliferation of new social movements fighting and advocating for equality/ justice in terms of race, gender and the environment proceeding from an open Laclau-ian social discursiveness – and the setbacks these movements have recently and often abruptly suffered due to the populist move to the right in the US and Europe – is evidence that the contemporary western political world does not offer an even playing field (7). Laclau's comment, “At my old age I am not afraid of anything”, may suggest a number of things. He had been around long enough to expect any eventuality, he cared less because he wouldn't be around for too much longer, or perhaps he had seen enough governmental revolutions and cyclical changes to no longer fear them. In this essay, however, I am less interested in his motives and more in the idea of fear itself. What does it mean to be scared or not to be scared now? In our contemporary political climate – from where I write this in Europe – fear is an interesting and very present motif. .............................. There are two seemingly opposed strains in Laclau's theory – the antagonisms deemed an essential part of democracy with their tipping points towards violence – and the ideas of connectivity and the discursive: Together Laclau and Mouffe in their collaborative project Hegemony and Socialist Strategy developed a proposition for post-Marxist theory through a concept they called “radical democracy”, a socialist theory which would involve making discernible links between new social movements, and which could be about connectivity between grass roots movements (ecology gender equality etc) (8). In their account the working class becomes a social form moved away from the traditional-wage-labour struggle and essentially empty of content. Laclau and Mouffe attempted to move socialist theory away from old Marxist ideas of structured formations – i.e. 'Marxist science' – towards a theory which was far more discursive and reflexive: the linking of disparate movements and the flow of discursive articulation. It is this dichotomy, of discursiveness/connectivity set against antagonism, which I find particularly relevant in relation to contemporary forms of networking and networks and of specific interest here regarding the critical aims and concerns of Arts Territory Exchange. .................... The 2016 US election result and the rise of populism across Europe were the catalyst for the founding of the Arts Territory Exchange (aTE), a large-scale collaborative project between artists across the world working with ideas of remoteness and offering challenge to the idea that culture ‘happens’ in urban areas – and that rural areas are essentially culturally barren and only articulated through urban voices (this also involves challenging artist residency and research cultures where artists descend on rural and remote areas to glean creative material – to in turn be re-layed to city audiences). The tensions between urban and rural areas have been heightened and deepened since 2016 in Europe, and this is something aTE seeks to address; artists in vastly differing parts of the world are invited to work together, digitally and through the postal system, exploring ideas of territory, locality and place, so they may respond – by proxy – to another place while at the same time re-evaluating their own. Documents from their exchanges then become part of an interactive living archive and evolving resource collated in the form of a website, an archive and series of exhibitions. Many of the artists in our programme cite populism in some way as a catalyst to wanting to join our international network. Fear of closed and parochial narratives seem keenly felt by artists and writers living rurally who already have their attention attuned to ideas of locality and place. The artists from our network selected for this exhibition are all responding to ideas of connectivity, injustice and confusions which may stem from a rise in populist thought and feelings of abandonment by older generations in strange and uncertain times. Laclau's idea that political meaning can only be generated through discursive articulation is apposite in this context particularly in regards to international dialogue and discussion which take place across time zones, borders and differing topographies. In thinking about this exhibition we have sought to explore the idea of damage, and disconnect (municiple structures, border walls, ant-immigrant mentality) of the West's current populism and work through ideas/networks and other types of 'popular' enmeshings which may offer the potential of repairing and re-stitching. The title of the show ‘A Stitch in Time’ suggests something hand-made, something put together, painstakingly perhaps, it also suggests a moment, a mere stitch and one of many. I take the idea of the 'stitch' as one which echoes the creating of a network...the delivering of messages, the back and forth of a postal or digital exchange... .............. The idea of the stitch, we associate with Laclau here, originates from psychoanalytic ideas of the Suture (stitch is the literal translation from the French of the word suture) and was a term used widely in psychoanalytic film theory, credited to Jacques Lacan and developed by Jacques-Alain Miller (9). Lacan cites neurosis as a scar ‘cicatrice’ – the remnant of an original. Thus, as this wound is situated within the subconscious, it is essentially within a gap, an unknown space (10). On one hand there is represented a cleaving, a division and a lack, and on the other side the possibility of the coming together and healing – which for a Lacanian analysand may be the drive for entering therapy in order to discover the reason for an individual’s neurosis, that which is in a full sense unknowable. The Lacanian Suture – the leaving of a scar which will always represent the wound and in turn difference – essentially establishes the social field of language (11). For Laclau and Mouffe moments of stitching and suture-ing exist precisely within this social field, in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy they state ''Hegemonic practices are suturing in so far as their field of operation is determined by the openness of the social, by the ultimately unfixed character of every signifier. This original lack is precisely what the hegemonic practices try to fill in.”(12) The action of the hegemonic practices to fill in and repair the site of lack is clearly explained through surgical metaphors by Michelle Barrett: 'Laclau and Mouffe present us with a body politic whose skin is permanently split open, necessitating ceaseless duty in the emergency room for the surgeons of hegemony whose fate it is to try and close, temporarily and with difficulty, the gaps'. She goes on to remind us that this patient never makes it to the recovery ward (13). The social field with its constant upheavals and antagonisms prevents the healing of the wound into a unified totality. The social can be viewed as a series of failed attempts to ‘domesticate’ the field of differences. For Laclau and Mouffe “The social is articulation in so far as ‘society’ is impossible”(14) – constituting a state of immanence or permanent suspension of the possibility of a whole. Therefore to continue the surgical metaphor, the complete suturing of the wound would be impossible and lead to a closed and undemocratic society. Thus the act of re-stitching and cleaving must continue ad- infinitum. Without rupture there can of course be no repair. Judith Butler's analysis within a context of gender is useful here, In a similar vein she links Laclau and Mouffe's ideas with Althusser’s ideological field as a “permanent (and promising) instability” (15) In relation to Laclau and Mouffe's theories she says that “The incompletion of every ideological formulation is central to the radical democratic project’s notion of political futurity” and by situating the idea of 'misunderstanding' as a space of political subjective freedom “ No signifier can be radically representative, for every signifier is the site of a perpetual méconnaissance; it produces the expectation of a unity, a full and final recognition that can never be achieved, paradoxically the failure of such signifiers – 'woman' is the one which comes to mind – fully to describe the constituency they name is precisely what constitutes these signifiers as sites of fantasmic investment and discursive re-articulation. It is what opens the signifier to new meanings and new possibilities for political re-signification” (16). So the failures and misunderstandings which prevent repair and wholeness are also essential spaces allowing for moments of change within gender identity, sexuality and other sites of subjectivity as well as allowing entry for moments of resistance, that is – cultural grassroots movements which proliferate within a culture of open méconnaissance (misrecognition) and unfinishedness. Networks and Stitches If politics is not a fixed thing and instead based upon difference and slippage – i.e. constant re-stitching, for Laclau and Mouffe the attempt to temporarily fix meaning across the threshold of difference (or the surgical site) is what they define as discourse. According to their proposition for a constant dispersal of elements as individual formations in dialogue, every identity is inter-relational according to its own contingency “But this infinite play requires a certain fixation so that meaning may be produced” (17). They use Lacan's concept of 'Point de capiton' to develop ideas of multi-centres or nodal points, elements that assume a type of structural function within a discursive field. That element allows a certain repair/stitch – always partial – so that which they term 'the signifier chain' may acquire some meaning. The concept of partial fixing of meaning across a chain is what we may understand as articulation.(18) It is easy to see how the idea of the network can fit with the concept of the nodal or point de caption – momentary points where the subject is 'sewn' to the signifier in order for communication to happen – the term 'quilting' is useful here – a process which for Lacan was essential to the formation of any 'normal' thought process, in the absence of quilting points the subject would be questioning the meaning of every sign they encountered, a tendency common in psychosis. The word 'quilting' is appealing and evocative of a hand-made process, a process of domestic labour; from the saving, salvaging and re-using scraps of fabric – recycling and making anew for practical uses – to detailed and complicated patchwork and appliqué to be hung on walls. To extend the metaphor, the American tradition of quilting was often a communal and female act. For artist led networks/collectives that operate globally like the Arts Territory Exchange, the idea of a network as handmade and stitched together is an important one. The aTE network has no superstructure (no fixed premises, no core funding from any particular country) it exists purely on the basis of the communication between its members – digital and postal correspondences between artists who mostly never meet in person and live in different parts of the world. The idea of a quilt overlaying geographies and ideologies and breaching rural and urban divides is perhaps an ambitious reach, but the metaphor of overlaying something hand-stitched, perhaps repaired and reworked, opens up interesting space for alternate cartographies, temporalities and fantasies. The problem with democracy and the populist 'Void' Of course there are many types of network; We are living at a point in time mediated by and enmeshed with them; These networks can be separated into a broad duality, those in which algorithms whittle down facts into fantasies and those which are created from the ground up – one might say 'hand stitched'. One grants a simulation of freedom and choice (i.e. Facebook) and another ‘lives’ and offers agency to its participants/users/members. It is not so simple though to call one type of network corporate and the other ‘grass roots’ (a term often now commandeered by marketing corporations). These ideas can be usefully thought through in Laclau's conception of populism: Laclau uses Peter Worsley’s ideas to develop the concept of populism as an emptiness, not a political ideology in itself but a cultural dimension which can be present within a multiplicity of political systems. “(...)ideas, in the process of becoming absorbed into successive cultural contexts, different from those in which they were engendered or have hitherto flourished, not only assume a different sociological significance in so far as they will be differently used by being incorporated within new frameworks of action, but will be also modified qua ideas, since they must necessarily be articulated with other psychic furniture: pre-existing 'interests', cognitive elements and structures, effectual dispositions, etc., which are all part of the receiving milieu. The 'original' ideas must intrinsically, therefore, be modified in the process and become different ideas?” (19). Populism as an idea capable of assimilation into other social formations – affecting change in the process, suggests a positive use for populist thought – as with the nodal or stitch, a way ideas can be delivered and shared amongst social groups, modified through dialogue across particular social ecologies of different groups – the Extinction Rebellion is an example of this, a movement which is beginning to shape public policy and at the same time a consideration of how people operate in their daily domestic habits, whilst also still operating on a cultural subversive level. Laclau states that populism should be approached in terms of what those processes of simplification and emptying attempt to perform or express (20). For Laclau, it is exactly this emptiness of the political performative that leads to the distain of populism by elites – but by the same token we may argue that the emptiness leads to manipulation by elites taking advantage of an empty signifier. This dynamic was reproduced in simple terms by Eric Corijn in his keynote speech at the International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts in Brussels – 'Art in the Age of Populism': “The people do not exist as such, they are not a given, they are the product of a political process that exactly constructs the will of the people, builds it, makes it. ‘The people’ do not have a voice. All those pretending speaking in the name of the people do speak in the name of their own image of the population, in most cases a very partial perspective, an ideological view point of what the people should be...thus from a theoretical or analytical point of view populism as a means of directly, without intermediaries, expressing the will of the people is very doubtful and is in many ways related to a very authoritarian view of representation...and yes, in that sense populism is generally not on the side of democracy....” (21) Laclau insists that populism is an essential part of democracy and operates neither on the side of, or against, although he also states that the content of populist movements are always obfuscated by multiple meanings, or are opaque and vague (22). Barret Webber outlines the term ‘populism’ itself is a signifier without any valid content of its own, “(...)a signifier that harbours a void, which is demonstrated by the sheer variety of ways that it is used in the literature Laclau surveys”(23), here we can relate populism back to the site of the scar – where the play of differences takes place – populism in its harbouring of a void, is to be impressed upon by left and right in a continual swaying back and forth of institutionally managed tension (and violent slips...) the tension of course upon which for Laclau, society is completely dependent. ............... As space of lack, populism becomes Lacan's 'desiring imaginary', a space imbued with ideological notions (24). Following this trajectory, into the populist space of lack comes the dangerous insertion of myth: Timothy Schneider in his recent talk in Vienna ‘A Speech To Europe: JudenPlazt 1010’ stated that it is no coincidence that figureheads of European populist movements are not interested in past history or the future but only in national myth – myths that divert from the European responsibility for remembering the traumatic past upon which the EU lays its foundations, and from a responsibility for a collective future. “We must ... not allow ourselves to remember the Holocaust as it fragments into small pieces into our national memories. The national memories are not good enough” (25). National identity, sovereignty, freedom, race, industrial and agrarian systems – the myths pedalled by populist figure heads are endless. Writer James Meek calls the United Kingdom's 2016 Referendum on the EU the UK's 'Saint George' moment, using the mythic figures of both Saint George and the Dragon and Robin Hood, he suggests that the EU was cleverly aligned by the Leave Campaign to be, concurrently, the dragon to be vanquished and corpulent thief whose capital needed re-distributing. These myths bifurcated into a series of lies untruths and exaggerations – £350 million a week for the National Health Service (26)– being just one. To return to the idea of tipping points; If populism is in itself a void, a lack to be constantly filled, emptied and re-filled by right and left antagonisms– and if, as Laclau states, it is this that forms the essential way that the political and the ‘democratic’ is constructed – then what happens when the vessel/void of populism is no longer allowed/or able to empty itself – when the empty signifier becomes the subject in itself? (by this I mean that the discursive site is denied its becomingness – in the play between cleave/stitch, and instead becomes a totality). This may be explained in some way through Umberto Eco's UR-Fascism, the idea of a fascism that is re-occurring or eternal and can be present in a multiplicity of forms – each form of fascism will not share all the same characteristics – however just the presence of one characteristic within a political formation can allow the forces of fascism to coagulate. Amongst the characteristic features Eco names; the culture of tradition (particularly hero myths), love of technology but rejection of cultural modernity, action over thought and suspicion of experts, rejection of analytical criticism, fear of difference and perhaps the most prominent feature in Europe currently, although we could identify many more, the myth of individual rights, Eco states: “For Ur-Fascism... individuals as individuals have no rights, and 'the People' is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter... Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction... There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People” (27). As we can see there are many pitfalls for populism – especially the drive toward essentialism in the hands of charismatic leaders – here populism loses its usefulness, as Laclau would see it – as an empty space to be filled with recurring frictions at the site of difference. ............... Globalisation since 1989 in the US and Europe, specifically developed through neo-liberal market policies which, based on market flexibility, privatisation and de-regulation, have seen western economies and corporations distanced further from any individual state's control. No individual country has been able to maintain the market made up of cross-border corporations such as Google within their own individual laws and guidelines. Laclau's insistence on state legislated left/right antagonisms and at sites of wound and repair are inherently troubled by the cross border and unregulated features of our global digital economy. Populism is no longer a social formation to be activated and overseen by each individual government or its opposition parties within their own legislative boundaries. This causes problems for populist licensed articulations of dissent, as if they are not overseen by a state who has the power to control moments where political expression turns to violence – but rather, created for example by an algorithm – sponsored by another state by proxy – then the tipping points (explored in the Kirchner state licensed spitting incident mentioned in the introduction) cannot hope to be harnessed. We may be left with violence teetering over an edge which can no longer be institutionally managed. In the UK – where a referendum to leave the European Union may well have been influenced by Russian sponsored Bots (28), and digital propaganda campaigns – political parties instead of succeeding in swaying a populist and imperialist mood to their own ends speak increasingly to the rhetoric of a populism which transcends political motivation or loyalty to a particular ideology, and which speaks of internet soundbites and myths. The Labour Party in its recent denouncement of 'experts' could, ironically, have been borrowing its terminology straight from one of Donald Trump's Speeches (29). To assume that 'populism' and its attendant antagonisms occupy a position within the site of difference or the site of cleaving and re-stitching is misguided in a current terrain where antagonism is no longer hermetically contained within the realm of state control and where ideas of choice and freedom in computer generated algorithms masquerade as social discursiveness. Our highly computerized election system infrastructure is vulnerable to sabotage and cyberattacks and digital election fraud, the recent proliferation of which has been well documented. Over the past 20 years the internet has been held up as an example of a system which was fundamentally egalitarian – which existed away from state legislation and influence, a utopian idea that has since been unsettled multiple times (30). Instead of enabling egalitarian communication between people from diverse backgrounds and political persuasions in a neutral space, a University of Georgia study reveals that online discussion groups display the same hierarchical structure as other large social groups. Digital democracy is in-itself a myth. Writers on technology like Jamie Bartlett believe there is now a fundamental compatibility problem between democracy and technology involving crypto currency, the rise of Artificial Intelligence and targeted propaganda campaigns under the gaze of regulators. Bartlett’s main concern is that personalised advertising makes a common discourse impossible during political elections, as each individual receives their own segmented message, stultifying the possibility of collective discussion and curating (manipulating) an individual’s own knowledge base from a range of sources (31). A technology industry working to the logic of a free market system will of course blindly produce for production’s sake – and ask questions later, or not at all. The necessity for politics to gain some authority over the digital world is key. We see an extreme version of this in China's rejection of the Western internet;American Tech companies expected to make millions dominating the Chinese digital communication field, but instead of opening up to the West – as Bill Clinton predicted post the 2000 trade deal – China tightened its control over its technology. By 2018, WeChat had nearly one billion users across China and the government had developed a sophisticated system for control and censorship across the digital sphere. The Chinese 'app' system depends on user registration which requires various forms of ID enabling the government to keep close watch over its users. Examples of technologies tied so tightly to a particular political system are scant in the west – in China digital surveillance technologies and 'enhanced digital monitoring' enable crack downs by governments on 'grass routes' feminist, youth and climate movements (32). This stranglehold has led to the development of ‘digital re-education’ systems and the detainment of ethnic minority and Uighur populations for what can only be described as thought crimes.(32) The necessity to rise to the new global challenge of digital manipulation is pressing, and getting the balance right with regard to regulative 'holding' structures capable of mediation and repair rather than repression is a tenuous balance. .................. The idea of antagonism as characterised by Laclau depending upon the state of repair or tear – is essentially about a recognition of the 'other' and a recognition rather than a reconciliation of difference, seeing that different groups have opposing positions and meeting at the site of the wound, the space overseen, controlled and contained within the state. Laclau's idea of antagonism with their state controlled violences and tipping points differ for example from the idea of genocide where the existence and recognition of the 'other' as having agency is clearly obfuscated. I would suggest that the technology fuelled populisms take place apart from the site of 'wound/suture' and can easily fuel subjective positions which dangerously obfuscate the 'other'. Laclau and Mouffe state that there is no kind of 'super-game' that would submit antagonisms to its system of rules (33) and a system without antagonism is no longer a society. Yet with transborder tech conglomerates we see a strata of super structures which masquerade as 'society', and a plurality of voices that masquerade as the democratic-right who have far-right and fascist agendas. Chantall Mouffe, interviewed in 1998 on the subject of extremes in right/left plurality stated “I don't think there is a possibility of an adversarial relation with the extreme right. Those are enemies, while the adversarial relation can only take place between left and democratic right” (34). There is no productive and adversarial communication to be had with a fascist, be they human, troll or bot. Conclusion My use of Laclau's comment “At my old age I am not afraid of anything” at the beginning of this essay was an attempt to think about what to be afraid, or to not be afraid means now, and to question the grounds upon which we make judgements about where our boundaries around fear may be – a complacency around assumed knowledges of what violence is, where it is located and how it will be contained, may see the ground shift beneath our feet. The forces which drive the information revolution towards its irrational end, offering simulations of freedom to consumers whilst pushing the earth to the brink of environmental catastrophe, are indeed fear provoking. Laclau and Mouffe touch on the dangers posed by technology only briefly in the preface to the second edition of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, but regarding the dangers of transnational corporations, including tech giants, they insist on a return to thinking which “restores the centrality of politics over the tyranny of market forces” as essential (35). .......It might be worth returning to the two types of network I have touched upon, one which may facilitate openness – that I have referred to as hand-stitched, and one with limits and closes down thought. Timothy Schneider states that technology “spins ever fewer facts ever thinner into ever broader fantasies”(36) and suggests that the best way to counter this is to produce more facts – I would also suggest creating more networks. Political tension can of course produce opportunities for network building within the loose framework of Laclau and Mouffe's discursive formation and articulation. But what artists and networks of artists can do takes many forms. The success of ‘resistance movements’ may depend on networks as nodal points or chains which may be able to offer other non-state legislated ways of creating social formations to counter the un-regulated positions of corporations. For Eric Corijn embedding these articulations within a mobile framework is essential, to confront current challenges, artists must be part of ‘the edges in transition’ (37). This may mean rising to counter (and complicate) new forms of information dissemination as they happen – Networks and practices which are versed in the technological flux and simultaneously use older and more inter-relational ways of communicating (which exist on different social and temporal strata such as postal communique) may be essential. Subverting common technologies to new and interesting purposes, through hacking, data scraping and re-appropriation may bring technology (and its relentless move forward) to within the field of cultural analysis.Returning to the suture/stitch; are we left then with a proposition for artist networks which stitch and make (ever suspended) attempts to heal? The idea of 'queerness' within popular culture has begun to occupy the position of something 'unfinished' – its becomingness (that precisely which imbues it with an ethical dimension) – is useful here: 'Queerness is not yet here...queerness exists for us as an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future...Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present. The here and now is a prison house. We must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately in new worlds...'(38). This rejection of here and now and an insistence on potentiality brings us back to the idea of 'quilting' – temporary moments where meanings are stitched together - which for Slavoj Žižek was as much about fantasising as political recuperation; we may see the idea of meeting at site of difference as fantasy not as a point of escape from our reality but as an offer to us of the social reality itself (39). This may mean in practical terms that the function of the fantasy (also fetish) is to allow those subject to variant narrow ideology to escape their dream – to accept the status quo and in turn the possibility of a future (40). The responsibility for a future and acknowledgement that a future exists seems crucial – rather than the mythology of the now we see in contemporary political populism. The idea of resilience also seems important, the ability to be able to create anew after violence and destruction; Timothy D. Snyder outlines for us that that the formation of the European Union was in essence an act of sublimation after the failings of Empire and that it is still something unique, something NEW, and I might add, precariously and carefully stitched together (41), (pertinently Snyder also mentions that the EU is also the West's most effective tech regulator). The most clear example of healing and future proofing we have from the liberal left during this European crisis is the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, or DiEM25, the political party of Yanis Varoufakis, which seeks to acknowledge the unique and essential nature of the European project whilst at the same time seeking to analyse the failings which have caused dissatisfaction, seeking to strengthen democratic ties. DiEM25 also unites and connects amongst its support base a large number of 'grass roots' networks relating to feminist, ecological and post-globalisation movements. Can movements like this be seen to re-weave populist violence into other new and useful networks? Certainly DiEM25 opens up a space where oppositional voices can meet to potentially make repairs. It is the process of continual healing re-capitulations such as these which may perhaps lead to a more effective democracy or a cycle back away from the right; Derrida in speaking of fraternity reminds us to think of the term ‘friend’ in terms of distance as well as close proximity to enable our differences and distances to become sites of cohesion (42). This proposition opens up a space for a trans-locality which may be geographic or ideological. Subjective positions which will include the ability to be local and global simultaneously. Returning to Laclau, that which wounds also enables the possibility of re-stitching------towards networks which are productively fearful, vigilant and open------ Notes.1 https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1575-ernesto-laclau-s-last-interview-with-la-nacion, Diego Sehinkman asks among other things whether Laclau thinks Kirchner will make further concessions to the right or the demands of the International monetary fund and how a populist government can rationally square itself alongside the wealth of its political leaders. 2 Cristina Kirchner’s administration railed against critical media outlets such as those owned by Grupo Clarín, leading critics of her government to say very credibility of journalism was at risk and that Argentine citizens were deprived of objective sources of information on broad political and economic issues. 3 Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has been verbally attacked by Trump on a number of occasions, most recently (April 2019) associating her with the 9/11 attacks on America though a video he shared on Twitter. He also incites his supporters to violence against protesters during his rallies during his election campaign saying “knock the crap out of them,” and that he would “pay for [the] legal fees.” 4 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/aug/27/hostile-environment-anatomy-of-a-policy-disaster 5 Laclau states “I believe in an administered antagonism. If there are institutions within which antagonism distinguishes the Left from the Right and both participate in one same institutional game, then we have a healthier society”.https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1575-ernesto-laclau-s-last- interview-with-la-nacion 6 Here Laclau posits that although the working class has been historically designated as the main revolutionary class because of its 'alienated' relation to capital’, especially towards the end of the democratic nineteenth century, he argues this was primarily a historical and contingent event in the history of Marxism that does not necessarily hold in the twentieth century after the rise of fascism, and thus in our contemporary society what were the working class have become essential consumers within a capitalist framework. 7 The roll back of women's reproductive rights in America and the rise of the alt-right are but two relevant examples. 8 'We will call articulation any practice establishing a relation among elements such that their identity is modified as a result of the articulatory practice. The structured totality resulting from the articulatory practice, we will call discourse'. Laclau and Mouffe ; (2011) (Second edition) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy; London & New York: Verso. 9 Developed in ‘La Suture: Éléments d’une Logique du Signifiant’, Jaques Alain Miller. 10 Lacan’s Seminar XI (1964), published as ‘The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis’ 11 Through its covering of lack – formed by damage done within the 'Real' , the suture, existing within the realm of the ‘imaginary’, positions the subject within the chain of signification or as a sign – which constitutes (my understanding) of Jacques-Alain Miller's argument in his paper ‘La Suture: Éléments d’une Logique du Signifiant’ 12 Laclau and Mouffe (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. 13 Ideology, Politics, Hegemony, from Gramsci to Laclau and Mouffe – Michelle Barrett in Mapping Ideology edited by Slavoj Žižek ( p2) 14 Laclau and Mouffe, 14 85:11415 Judith Butler (1993) Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex'; New York: Routledge, (p192)16 Judith Butler 1993:191 17 Paula Biglieri and Gloria Perelló; 'The Names of the Real in Laclau’s Theory: Antagonism, Dislocation, and Heterogeneity' https://ojs.zrc- sazu.si/filozofski-vestnik/article/viewFile/3232/2949 18 Laclau and Mouffe, 1985: 113 19 Laclau, E. (2005); On Populist Reason; London: Verso (p20).20 Laclau, E., 2005:2021 ‘Art in the age of Populism': IETM (International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts) Brussels opening keynote speech. Eric Corijn.05/12/2017. https://www.ietm.org/en/themes/art-in-the-age-of-populism-ietm-brussels-opening-keynote-speech22 Laclau, E., 2005:6723 Barret Weber; Laclau and Zizek On Democracy and Populist Reason. International Journal Of Zizek Studies.Volume Five, Number One. 24 The Desiring Imaginary or 'Object Petit a' in Lacan, is the object left behind by the introduction of the Symbolic to the Real and emerging out of a gap or lack in the symbolic order. (Can be imagined to be separate from the rest of the body or as object of desire sought in the other). 25'A Speech To Europe: JudenPlazt 1010' Timothy D Synder; JudenPlatz Vienna 2019. http://www.erstestiftung.org/en/timothy-snyder-judenplatz- 1010/26 ‘Vote Leave’, the campaign for the UK leaving the European Union pledged to spend the £350 million said to go to the EU every week on the National Health Service http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/why_vote_leave.html 27 ‘UR-FASCISM’, Umberto Eco in The New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995. p8. 28 On 23 June 2016, the day of the Brexit vote, Russia mobilised an army of trolls, which at one stage included 3,800 accounts. The fake accounts Tweeted out 1,102 posts with the hashtag #ReasonsToLeaveEU this has been proven by data released by Twitter and admitted by Twitter. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/17/why-isnt-there-greater-outrage-about-russian-involvement-in-brexit 29 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn repeatedly mentioned 'experts' in his post-election win speech at the Peterborough by-elections in the UK 2019. 30 University of Georgia. "An egalitarian Internet? Not so, study finds.", ScienceDaily, 12 June 2011. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110610131904.htm31 Bartlett, J. (2018) The People vs Tech: How the Internet is Killing Democracy (and How We Can Save It), London: Ebury Press. 32 I am aware that my analysis is on the whole western centric and to pay due attention to parallel technology systems in China would warrant an entirely different study. The information I have used here is drawn from a new tech Magazine LOGIC. Issue 7. China. https://logicmag.io/07-china/33 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/muslim-uighurs-china-detention-leaked-documents-new-york-times-unhealthy-thoughts-a9206216.htm34Laclau and Mouffe (2001) (second edition); Hegemony and Socialist Strategy; London: Verso (p.18) 35Hegemony and Socialism: An Interview with Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau from Conflicting Publics, Simon Fraser University, 1998. accessed through Palinurus Journal http://anselmocarranco.tripod.com/id68.html 36 Laclau and Mouffe 2001:18 37'A Speech To Europe: JudenPlazt 1010' Timothy D Synder; JudenPlatz Vienna 2019. http://www.erstestiftung.org/en/timothy-snyder-judenplatz- 1010/38 ‘Art in the age of Populism': IETM (International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts) Brussels opening keynote speech. Eric Corijn. 05/12/2017. https://www.ietm.org/en/themes/art-in-the-age-of-populism-ietm-brussels-opening-keynote-speech 39 Muñoz, José Esteban (2009) Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity; New York: NYU Press (p1) 40 Žižek, Slavoj (1989) The Sublime Object of Ideology; London & New York: Verso (p45) 40 This psychoanalytical metaphor should be seen very differently from the political positions developed through exposure to social media and myth machine, this unexamined ideological tabloids through the populist position would be seen as a symptom.41 “The history of the 20th century is that of European powers, which for the previous 500 years had dominated the world, found themselves forced to pull back to Europe, and there in Europe created something new. Schuman gave his address in 1950, in 1951 in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt spoke of the essence of human freedom being the creation of new things. The European Union is a new thing”. ‘A Speech to Europe: JudenPlazt 1010’ Timothy D Snyder. JudenPlatz Vienna 2019. 42 Derrida, Jaques (2005) The Politics of Friendship; London & New York: Verso.