In the second half of the past century, new processes of subjectivation brought on new modes of conceiving and practicing politics in the democratic countries. Critical attention addressed the transformation of the representative government model into the development of the so-called populisms and of the more advanced forms of participatory democracy. In order to comprehend the specificities of such tendencies, this essay will analyze the complex relations between the categories of politicsand desire. The analysis will first look at such semantics in those philosophers who contributed to full Modernity: Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Hegel. The focus will then shift to the analysis and comparison of the theories by exceptional contemporary authors: Lacan, Deleuze, and Foucault.
