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Any definition presupposes a theoretical grid giving sense to what is defined. This sense—as the very notion of definition asserts—can only be established on the basis of differentiating the defined term from something else that the definition excludes. This, in turn, presupposes a terrain within which those differences as such are thinkable. It is this terrain that is not immediately obvious when we call a movement (?), an ideology (?), a political practice (?) populist. In the first two cases—movements or ideologies—to call them populist would involve differentiating that attribute from other characterizations at the same defining level, such as “fascist,”“liberal,”“communist,” and so on. This engages us immediately in a complicated and ultimately self-defeating task: finding that ultimate redoubt where we would find “pure” populism, irreducible to those other alternative characterizations. If we attempt to do so we enter into a game in which any attribution of a social or ideological content to populism is immediately confronted with an avalanche of exceptions. Thus we are forced to conclude that when we use the term some actual meaning is presupposed by our linguistic practices, but that such a meaning is, however, not translatable into any definable sense. Furthermore, we can even less, through that meaning, point to any identifiable referent (which would exhaust that meaning). What is it that happens when we move from movements or ideologies as units of analysis, to political practices? Everything depends on how we conceive of that move. If it is governed by the unity of a subject constituted at the level of the ideology or the political movement, we have …