An empty signifier, in Laclau’s vocabulary, is a name progressively emptied of specific content so
that it can stand for an entire chain of heterogeneous demands: the poorer its intension, the wider the
coalition it can represent (Laclau, 1996, 2005). . . .Laclau was entirely lucid about the epistemic price and entirely explicit that it was worth paying, because the point of such signifiers is not to describe but to assemble [and articulate]. . . .Defenders of the concept argue that neoliberalism names a real macro-phenomenon and that the term’s breadth reflects the breadth of the thing (Peck, 2013; Laruffa, 2024). Our argument does not require denying this: real processes of marketisation, privatisation and financialisation occurred. The question is why they came to be gathered under this name, in this form, on this timeline. . .
A concept that functions as an articulating signifier is unlikely to be disciplined by demonstrations of its descriptive failure, because description was never its principal function, and the productive question may therefore be less ‘what is the correct definition of neoliberalism?’ than ‘what work is the concept doing, for whom, and at what analytical cost?’
Paniagua, Pablo and Vergara, Álvaro (2026). “Neoliberalism As Adversary: The Latin American Construction of an Empty Signifier”. My underlining. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=7316099 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.7316099)
The upshot is clear: The analytic costs in relying on and using “we the people,” “capitalism,” and “neoliberalism” understandably bother the policy analyst more than the policy advocate intent on articulating who the adversary is and assembling heterogeneous opponents to it.
For the analyst, patterns (if any) to be identified and analyzed across a range of different events, situations, and contexts–including but not limited to those self-identified as neoliberal–are unavoidable.
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 