DOI 10.37240/wb.2025.5.6
wunderBlock. Psychoanaliza i Filozofia, nr 5 / 2025
Strony: 66-84
Abstract: This article examines populism as a symptom that reveals a structural paradox at the heart of modern parliamentary democracy: the tension between constituent and constituted power. Drawing on Ran Hirschl’s critique of “juristocracy,” and engaging with the classical debate between Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt, the text proposes a psychoanalytic reinterpretation of constitutional theory through Lacanian concepts of the Real, the Symbolic, and surplus enjoyment (plus-de-jouir). It argues that the liberal order’s fiction of the separation of powers functions as a mechanism of castration that transforms the collective force of constituent power into the symbolic subject of “the people.” Populism in this view represents the return of the repressed enjoyment of the constituent force – the Real of the people – to the symbolic field of politics. By tracing this libidinal dynamic, the paper suggests that populism’s disruptive appeal stems not from ideological manipulation but from the persistence of the Real within the constitutional order itself. The study concludes that any defense of democracy must recognize and accommodate this constitutive excess rather than seek to repress it.
Keywords: constituent power, constituted power, populism, surplus enjoyment (plus-de-jouir), juristocracy, democratic representation, liberal constitutionalism, Lacanian political theory, the Real and the Symbolic
About the author: Jan Sowa is a materialistdialectical social theorist and researcher. He studied at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, and the University Paris VIII in Saint-Denis, France. He holds a PhD in sociology and a habilitation in cultural studies. His research and teaching assignments have taken him to several institutions around the world, including the University of Sao Paulo, the Academy of the Arts of the World in Cologne, and the Institute for Human Studies in Vienna. He was a member of the Committee on Cultural Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences (2016–2020), and curator of the Discursive Programs and Research of the Biennale Warszawa (2018–2019). He currently works as Associate Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. ORCID: 0000-0002-7830-662X.
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Utwór dostępny jest na licencji Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa – Użycie niekomercyjne – Bez Utworów Zależnych 4.0 Międzynarodowa
