We show that the singular dissipative potential of the phenomenological rate-independent plasticity can be obtained by homogenization of a micro-model with quadratic dissipation. The essential ingredient making this reduction possible is a rugged energy landscape at the micro-scale, generating under external loading a regular cascade of subcritical bifurcations. Such landscape may appear as a result of a sufficiently strong pinning or jamming of defects, leading to elastic micro-metastability. The rate-independent plastic deformation emerges in this description as a continuous succession of infinitesimal viscous events; the limiting procedure presumes the elimination of small time and length scales. We present an explicit example of a simple viscoelastic mass-spring system whose macroscopic dissipative behavior is plastic, rate independent.