ABSTRACT
This article offers a collectively developed analysis of the Covid-19 crisis as it relates to contemporary cultures of rejection, i.e. the socio-cultural conditions in which authoritarian and right-wing populist politics thrive, in Europe. We explore how the pandemic and its management reinforces, transforms and/or overrides existing antagonisms and institutes new ones in Serbia, Croatia, Austria, Germany and Sweden. We discuss how the Covid-19 crisis affects the rise of new statisms; gendered patterns of social reproduction; mobility and migration; digital infrastructures; and new political mobilizations.
This article offers a collectively developed analysis by a transnational research group (www.culturesofrejection.net) investigating contemporary socio-cultural conditions in which authoritarian and right-wing populist politics thrive. The authors conduct research in Austria, Croatia, Germany, Serbia, and Sweden: five states and societies that together constitute a political space instituated by the migration movements since 2015 and the political struggles that have emerged with them (Jonsson Citation2020). The “welcome culture” (Bojadžijev Citation2018) that had initially emerged with these movements and struggles has since been overshadowed by a conjuncture of right-wing mobilisations and an authoritarian turn in European, and the emergence of what we term “cultures of rejection”. In this contribution, we sketch the multi-faceted impact the Covid-19 crisis has on cultures of rejection.
We have developed the heuristic and deliberately provocative concept of “cultures of rejection” to investigate socio-cultural conditions in which authoritarian and right-wing populist politics have become acceptable. This approach both diverges from and illuminates the existing research on right-wing populism or neo-fascism. We introduce the concept of cultures of rejection fully aware of the role “culture” plays in neo-racist discourses (Balibar Citation1991, 22). We consciously refute any essentialist understanding of “culture” and a de-politicizing “culturalization” of social phenomena (cf. Fornäs et al. Citation2007; Lentin Citation2014). Instead, we draw on the critical tradition of Cultural Studies which “insists on a ‘deep’ understanding of culture, which looks ‘up and out’ at the structures of power, history and economics, but also ‘down and in’ at the structures of feeling which animate it” (Alexander Citation2016, 1434). Thus, we consider cultures as conditions of “concrete social life”, assembling, as Fredric Jameson (Citation1971, 16) put it, “words, thoughts, objects, desires, people, places, activities,” in which subjects navigate terrains of contradiction and antagonism. Our desire is to research the material and everyday conditions of existence, both in the ways in which we live it, and in ways in which we feel they ought to be lived (Cole Citation2020). Supplementing well-established terms such as “othering” and “exclusion”, the notion of rejection provides us with a focus on attitudes and practices in the everyday life of workers, that combine and articulate well-known cultural operations of othering and exclusion (Balibar Citation2005) with the rejection of apparatuses of authority, such as state institutions or established media outlets. In all five countries, our research has shown that the objects of rejection may vary and combine differently, but often include immigration, domestic political elites, institutions of civil society and media, shifting gender relations, and racialised or culturalised Others. If we address so many “varieties of reality” and think of them as more than just a composite, it is because we believe our time demands “archaeologies of the future” (Jameson Citation2005). Thinking the current conjuncture through the notion of cultures of rejection helps us understand the modality in which experiences of transformation and crisis are lived across Europe today (cf. Hall et al. Citation1978, 394).
Cultures of rejection and multiple crises
Long before the COVID-19 pandemic plunged our world(s) into an exceptional global crisis, scholars have identified elements of an ongoing “multiple crisis” (Houtart Citation2010). More recently, informatization of labour processes (Raj-Reichert, Zajak, and Helmerich Citation2020) and the logistification and digitalization of migration regimes (Altenried et al. Citation2018) have added new dimensions to these dynamics of change and crisis. It is within this specific literature that the concept of cultures of rejection has emerged. In our empirical investigations (Harder and Opratko Citation2020), we have encountered a number of themes that indicate how subjective investments in cultures of rejection are articulated with experiences of crisis. These include a wider detachment from discourses and institutions of authority, such as state institutions and “politics” in the broadest sense, shifting gender relations, which were both in turn linked to the rejection of migrants and “non-belonging” Others, and a rejection of news media. We highlight these topics because they are currently re-negotiated, re-articulated and reinforced under the conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic. We have used the current situation to jointly reflect on our initial findings under the conditions of the global pandemic. While our discussion remains inevitably sketchy, we believe that we can provide valuable observations on how the Covid-19 crisis is affecting cultures of rejection by reinforcing, transforming or overriding existing antagonisms, but also by instituting new ones. With wide-ranging quarantine measures affecting people’s everyday lives in unprecedented ways, shedding light on the state of public health systems, and a pandemic-induced global economic crisis, questions of ethical and political authority, of trust in and consensus with moral and political leadership, have come to the fore. In this light, this contribution, written in Summer 2020, focuses on five selected fields that play an imminent role in our research: (1) The re-articulation of the role of the state during the pandemic, and the rise of new statisms; (2) the re-negotiation of the domestic sphere and gendered patterns of social reproduction; (3) practices of mobility and migration and political attempts at their regulation; (4) the role of digital communication infrastructures; and (5.) new political mobilizations against anti-COVID measures.
The rise of Covid-19 statisms
Social reproduction and the renegotiation of the home
This renegotiation of the role of the home, and in a wider sense of the relationship between the public and the private sphere, is highly relevant for the study of cultures of rejection. Many of our informants experience the public sphere as an annoyance, as overwhelming and stressful, and centre their lives around a rather restricted space of the private home. When this very home becomes a point where government techniques, public health strategies, economic imperatives, and patriarchal structures intersect in novel ways during the pandemic, we expect new social tensions to arise.
Migration and mobility
In interviews with workers in the retail and logistics sectors in Croatia conducted during the pandemic, we also witnessed the growing influence and rapid spread of anti-migrant sentiment on social media across the Balkan countries, as well as covert racism towards co-workers of different ethnic backgrounds among Croatian informants. This contrasts with recent quantitative data from the European Social Survey (ESS) on attitudes towards immigration, where 60% of the population in Croatia believe the state should allow immigration from the poorer non-European countries (European Social Survey Citation2020). This result places the country among the European nations most open to migration, even in comparison to their neighbouring countries (Italy: 51%; Serbia: 45%; Austria: 39%; Hungary: 8%). Even though the ESS fieldwork was done during 2018 and 2019, the numbers are surprising giving the ongoing reports of human rights violations in treatment of migrants coming to or transiting the territory of Croatia during 2019 and 2020. However, we should be vary of these results, given the problems conventional cross-cultural quantitative studies are prone to (Buil, de Chernatony, and Martínez Citation2012). The ESS numbers have been portrayed by media in Croatia as unquestionable evidence of Croatian general openness – triggering reactions in the population questioning not only the validity of the data, but the integrity of scientific and educational institutions in general. We read this as another example of a conflict emerging on the basis existing cultures of rejection. In this case, a number of crucial antagonisms – against migrants/migration, against “mainstream media”, and against scientific institutions – intersect to produce a new and potentially volatile constellation.
Digital infrastructures in the Covid-19 Crisis: Public broadcasting, networked publics, private networks?
New political mobilisations
Civil activism expressing other demands, for example for justice, equality and democratic empowerment, have also emerged during the C19 pandemic. These protests largely accepted the restrictions imposed by the Corona measures and included an international “online demonstration” by the Fridays for Future movement, as well as numerous manifestations against the conditions in refugee camps and shelters and for the reception of refugees in Germany, which were often broken up by the police and led to arrests. The largest demonstrations took place on the weekend of Pentecost in several European cities in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
The largest and perhaps most momentous mobilisations took place in Serbia, where huge protests took place against the government’s mismanagement of the Covid-19 crisis. The mobilisations were triggered by the government’s zig-zag course, from neglecting the challenges of the “funniest virus in the world” (February 2020) to imposing the strictest lockdown measures in Europe (April 2020) to an early return to “normalcy” in May 2020. Protesters included members of left and liberal groups as well as a large number of supporters of the far-right. Police reacted violently and significantly increased its presence in the city of Belgrade. In the following few days, after one day of peaceful protests with the slogan “Sedi, ne nasedaj” (“Sit, don’t be deceived”) – perceived as a liberal response to state violence – police started firing teargas and randomly arresting protesters. Groups aligned to the political left were visible in the protests from July 4, attempting to raise the voice and attract attention among citizens against the very loud and organized right-wing groups. The protests revealed the impotence of the oppositional parties and groups to construct a coherent narrative and develop common demands. They also revealed an authentic rage and dissatisfaction among the Serbian population. They often articulate a desire to return to a “pre-political state”, evidence of a culture of rejection directed against politics and politicians in general, coupled with a deep dissatisfaction with social conditions in the country. Many attempts on social media to formulate demands on behalf of the citizens faced negative response and didn’t produce any substantial result. At the time of writing, it seems like the far-right has been able to capitalize on the protests, becoming more visible and entering the public mainstream more easily, with potentially dramatical long-term consequences.
Conclusion: new contradictions
The pandemic has created the perspective of a global threat through latent and increasingly economic-ecological contradictions – in regard to climate change and viral spread – while simultaneously creating the desire to return to a pre-pandemic state, open businesses and the democratic pretension that the way of doing economy is and was valid. Caught between a deep rupture in the self-evidence of the economic and social order and the inability to find feasible political alternatives, feelings of inescapabilty or being “locked in” can arise. In his 1944 crisis drama Huis Clos – translated as “No Exit” in English, but literally meaning “Locked Gates” – Jean Paul Sartre prefigures the fundamentally rejective reaction to this pandemic: “Hell is other people”.
As we have shown above, the Covid-19 crisis has multiple and deep impacts on the various aspects of cultures of rejection. In some cases, existing antagonisms – such as those instituted around the figure of the “migrant” or the “asylum seeker”, or against established media and scientific institutions and discourse – are being reinforced and charged with new layers of “viral” meaning. Other antagonisms – such as the rejection of the welfare state as “too generous” may be weakened by the experience of a deep public health crisis and mass unemployment. And finally, new antagonisms – such as those articulated by protests against quarantine measures, social distancing and the wearing of face-masks – arise and link up with existing ones, creating new potential lines of conflict and, perhaps, solidarity. Future research will have to take account of how the new contradictions arising from the pandemic and its management affect cultures of rejection in different locations and over time.
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