Our Culture Is Best! Populist Engagement with Culture in the Construction of the Populist Myth

ABSTRACT

The recent populist upsurge has dramatically transformed political, social and cultural realities, and the end of its success is not yet in sight. Adding to the scholarly work on the political and socio-economic determinants of populist success, this paper analyzes how populism and culture work together in constructing and propagating the populist myth. Concretely, it theorizes the interaction between populism and culture in narrating the people’s suffering of an existential crisis, and the populist leader’s identification with the people through a shared cultural narrative. As the example of French far-right populism shows, this manifests in two interconnected ways: on the one hand populism uses concrete cultural products to shape their dichotomous rhetoric, while on the other hand its articulation in society affects our understanding of who can (and cannot) culturally belong. The concept of equaliberty is introduced to further reflect on the democratic challenges posed by populist narratives, as well as consider the potential of inclusionary counter-narratives. To this end, the notion of artivism is presented as a mode of engagement that can bring the worlds of art and politics together, serving as a creative laboratory to produce equaliberal alternatives to populism.

KEYWORDS:

• Populism
• cultural narrative
• populist myth
• equaliberty
• artivism
• Marine Le Pen

Introduction

Populism has become a powerful political force in the international political arena since the start of the twenty-first century. This has been well exemplified by the Brexit vote and the Trump election in 2016, but also by the increasing societal polarization in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. While definitions of populism may vary, scholars identify two key characteristics of the phenomenon, namely its antagonistic relationship between the people and the elite, and its strong emphasis on the people’s sovereignty (Laclau 2005; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017; Panizza and Stavrakakis 2020). Both these elements can be found in the definition by Canovan (1999), that ‘populism in modern democratic societies is best seen as an appeal to ‘the people’ against both the established structure of power and the dominant ideas and values of the society.’ (3). Populism, seen in this light, mobilizes support through the narrative framing of a positive Self, the people, as opposed to a negative portrayal of Others. Casullo (2020) refers to this particular kind of storytelling as the ‘narrative genre of the populist myth’ (27) always repeating the same message:

Hence, the temporal organization of all populist myths follows the same structure: there is a people who in the past was wronged by a nefarious ‘them’; it suffers in the present, but, aided by a redeemer, it will be vindicated in the future. (Casullo 2020: 29)

Myths are a specific type of narrative, telling ‘a communal story that belongs to an ‘us’: they explain how an ‘us’ came to be and what makes it unique’ (Casullo 2020: 28). These myths are mediated through culture, and just like narratives more broadly, are a way of making sense of our past, present and future lives (Meretoja 2017). In this way, they are not only reflective of lived experience, but narrative practice performatively ‘produces and shapes reality’ (Meretoja 2017: 16).

Following the omnipresence of populist narratives in contemporary society, and considering their narrative specificity, it makes sense to analyze this phenomenon from a cultural studies perspective, as suggested in the work of Rensmann (2017). In fact, the field of cultural studies is precisely interested in analyzing the various ways in which culture and power interfere (Bennett 1998; Barker 2000). Such a view would conceptualize populism not as a mere response to a crisis of political representation or enduring economic and social malaise, but centralizes the importance of cultural belonging within the populist narrative as well as its resonance in politics and society more broadly. Culture, in this sense, is understood as ‘the actual, grounded terrain of practices, representations, languages and customs of any specific historical society’, including ‘the contradictory forms of “common sense”; which have taken root in and helped to shape popular life’ (Hall 1986: 26). This definition of culture as ‘shared social meanings’ (Barker 2000) acknowledges culture’s ability to reflect as well as reproduce and orientate social life, for instance in the celebration of traditions. Taking this idea even further, Levine (2015) argues that both literature and social life consist of similar colliding and disrupting forms that create order and organize experience. In this light, literature and artistic production more broadly, do not simply reflect or oppose political realities (or vice versa), but ‘aesthetic and political forms emerge as comparable patterns that operate on a common plane’ (16). In other words, cultural products and political narratives should not be considered as separate entities; in fact they always share formal patterns, hierarchies or oppositions, as exemplified in Casullo’s notion of the populist myth. Thus, the value of including culture in the study of populism lies in acquiring a deeper understanding of how both are working together in constructing and propagating ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ narratives in society.

Following this reasoning, this paper will address the following question: how does populism interact with culture, in the shaping and circulating of a populist myth? In doing so, it will accentuate two of its main elements, namely the way in which the people’s suffering is narrated as an existential crisis, and the populist leader’s identification with the people based on a shared cultural narrative. After zooming in on the narrative of the French far-right populist Marine Le Pen, the final part of this paper will propose the notion of equaliberty (Balibar 2014) both as a tool to evaluate populist narratives, and as a starting point for what could become a counter-narrative to exclusionary forms of populism. Finally, while this paper adopts a theoretical approach to populism and culture, and mainly focuses on the Western European context, the conclusion will offer suggestions to further test and systemize its main ideas through empirical inquiry.

The structure of this paper will reflect my line of argumentation in the following manner. In the first section, I will map different academic approaches to populism, to arrive at a definition that best aligns with the narrative focus of this paper, allowing to explore the cultural construction and articulation of the populist myth. I will argue that the interaction between culture and populism manifests in two interconnected ways: on the one hand populism uses concrete cultural products to shape their ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ rhetoric, while on the other hand the articulation of this populist rhetoric in society affects our understanding of who can and cannot culturally belong. Borrowing the terminology of Ricoeur (1991), there is the populist configuration of culture, and the refiguration of populism through culture. In this sense, through their engagement with culture, populism becomes a cultural actor. I hypothesize that these two dimensions reinforce each other, making of populism an ever more present political and cultural phenomenon.

The link with culture will be studied more in depth in sections two and three, taking as an example the French far-right populist Marine Le Pen. The second section will explore the populist narration of the people experiencing a cultural or identitary crisis, causing suffering and requiring a swift political solution. The role of the populist leader, more precisely their identification with the people through a shared cultural narrative, as well as the antagonizing of a non-belonging Other, will be the focus of section three.

The final part of the paper seeks to problematize a certain type of populist narratives as exclusionary and therefore harmful, proposing the notion of equaliberty, coined by the French philosopher Etienne Balibar (2014). This discussion will also be a starting point for thinking about counter-narratives to exclusionary populist narratives. I will propose the notion of artivism, meaning the blending of art and activism (Sandoval and Latorre 2008; Silverman 2020) as a possible mode of engagement. Illustrating my point with an example from literature, my argument here is that the worlds of art and politics could become a breeding ground for formulating alternative answers to populist narratives of exclusion.

Defining Populism

Since populism’s growing relevance in the global political arena, scholars from different disciplines and geographical areas have engaged with the question of what populism precisely is. The Oxford Handbook of Populism (Rovira Kaltwasser et al. 2017) distinguishes three conceptualizations of populism, namely the ideational, the strategic and the sociocultural (or discursive-performative) approach. The ideational approach (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017) considers populism as follows:

Populism is a thin-centred ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, the ‘pure people’ and ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the ‘volonté générale’ of the people. (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017: 6)

Following this definition, populism is conceived as a thin-centred ideology, allowing for it to be combined with other – full – ideologies. While populism’s three core concepts (the people, the elite and the general will) are constant factors, the precise definition of those entities is largely shaped by the host-ideology with which it appears. Although this definition is widely used, especially in the European context, others have qualified the conceptualization of populism as an ideology as ‘misguided’ and ‘for several reasons impossible’ (Ostiguy et al. 2020: 3). Furthermore, these scholars claim that the antagonistic relationship between the ‘pure people’ and the ‘corrupt elite’ is political and socio-cultural, rather than a normative distinction. Finally, they add that the notion of the ‘corrupt elite’ is ‘particularly Eurocentric’ (Ostiguy et al. 2020: 3), and does not translate well to the Latin American populist context.

The strategic and socio-cultural approaches question the presence of a fixed set of ideas in populism, in contrast to the ideational approach, and instead focus on commonalities in the way of doing politics. Weyland (2017) defines populism as ‘a political strategy through which a personalistic leader seeks or exercises government power based on direct, unmediated, uninstitutionalized support from large numbers of mostly unorganized followers’ (50). Focusing on how the populist leader successfully mobilizes popular support, this approach pays little to no attention to the agency of populist followers, seen as uncritically following their inspiring leader, portraying populism almost as a form of ‘demagoguery, manipulation, and authoritarianism’ (Ostiguy et al 2020: 4).

While the ideational approach privileges content over form and the strategic approach takes the opposite perspective, Casullo notes that both are in fact missing an important aspect:

So, if one defines populism as a personal strategy for power accumulation, social structures seem to recede into the background. If one defines populism as a social discourse, the strategic autonomy and agency of the leader disappear. (Casullo 2019: 56)

The discursive-performative approach seeks to overcome this issue by focusing precisely on the interaction between form and content, borrowing elements from Laclau’s logico-discursive approach. The latter sees populism as ‘a distinct discursive logic’, that ‘shapes our understanding of social reality and constitutes political agency’ (Panizza and Stavrakakis 2020: 24). According to Laclau, the people are not a pre-existing entity, but they are in fact discursively and performatively created through the articulation of an ‘equivalential chain of unfulfilled demands’, and, as such, opposed to an external Other (Ostiguy et al. 2020: 5). Panizza and Stavrakakis (2020) add that the people’s hegemonic struggle ‘always extends beyond the political realm and involves social and cultural processes that in the case of populism draw on high/low sociocultural divisions’ (25). In describing populism as ‘something that is done’ (49), Ostiguy and Moffitt (2020), emphasize the performative elements of populism, and argue that the negotiation of the people’s identity and their identification with the populist leader takes the shape of a back-and-forth process between leader and followers. In identifying with the people, populist leaders embody the sociocultural low, and disrupt the political status quo through their use of ‘bad manners’ (Moffitt 2019) or their transgression of established political norms (Aiolfi 2022).

Taking into account this paper’s focus on populist narratives, more precisely how their use of culture reflects and shapes the identity of the people, I will depart from the discursive-performative approach. More concretely, I will adopt Casullo’s notion of the populist myth discussed above, and explore the role that culture plays in this particular narrative. In doing so, I will concentrate on two key elements, namely the allusion to a cultural or identitary crisis, and the mutual identification between the populist leader and the people, based on a shared cultural narrative. To illustrate my point, I will mostly draw from the French context, more particularly the case of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN). What follows should therefore not be read as a generalizing account for all forms of populism, but engages mostly with far-right populism in France.

A Populist Cultural Myth

The recent upsurge of populism is often studied in relation to unbridled neoliberalism, globalization and technocracy, leading to the erosion of democratic principles, growing disparities between rich and poor, and the dismantlement of social safety nets among others (Finchelstein 2017; Rodrik 2017; Eatwell and Goodwin 2018; Moffitt 2019). However, recent scholarly work on populism suggests that populists do not merely respond to existing crises, but that they actively create a sense of crisis, to which they then offer a way out (Homolar and Scholz 2019; Agius 2021; Homolar and Löfflmann 2021; Kinnvall and Svensson 2022). These populist crisis narratives portray the country as experiencing a deep existential crisis, caused by a weak state or an evil Other. This speaks to the idea of ontological security, ‘the security of the self and how actors seek security through a consistent self-narrative’ (Agius 2021: 386). The populist self-narrative emphasizes the loss of a glorious past and an unsure future, and seeks to restore stability by evoking nostalgic images of greatness as well as identifying the culprits (Homolar and Scholz 2019).

While these contributions convincingly explain the pervasiveness of populist narratives in contemporary society, and highlight the people’s suffering as expressed in the populist myth, the role that culture plays in the shaping of these nostalgic narratives of we-ness is not explicitly studied. At the same time, such a perspective is highly relevant for the study of populism, as put forward by Casullo:

Populist movements depend on myths much more than other political identities, because the very nature of the populist mechanism for identity formation – the equivalence chain – relies on creating commonalities between disparate social demands without any reference to a ‘scientific’ or universal ideology. (Casullo 2020: 28)

In other words, due to their lack of a universal political agenda, populist narratives are highly specific for the social and cultural context in which they appear. This is why it is particularly relevant to analyze the importance of culture in populist narratives, not only populists’ use of culture to construct a narrative of cultural belonging, but also the presence of that narrative in society and its effect on common interpretations of ‘our’ culture.

Previous research reveals that populists engage with cultural products that express closeness to the people, particularly popular traditions and genres. This includes Ylä-Anttila’s (2017) study of the traditional Suvivirsi songs, appropriated by the right-wing populist Finns Party as a nostalgic alternative to progressive narratives of other political parties, or the work of García-Santamaría (2020) on the politicization of food culture by the Italian Lega leader Matteo Salvini, favouring simple, traditional dishes over haute cuisine. In these examples, culture is a quintessential factor for the construction and enactment of a narrative of community, embracing a specific kind of culture that not only is supposed to reflect the people’s character, but also underpins the idea of both the people and its culture being overshadowed by progressive and cosmopolitan forces.

Marine Le Pen’s campaign video¹ for the presidential elections of 2017 provides a good case study for analyzing her account of the French nation as being in crisis, using vivid cultural imagery. In the clip, Le Pen sets out her passionate and visceral love for France and its history, which is strongly blended with her personal history. We see her glancing through an old family album, but there are also images of emblematic buildings and figures referring to France’s rich history, such as Jeanne d’Arc, the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. Le Pen identifies with France’s past, as we see her riding a horse, immediately followed by a shot of the famous Parisian statue of Jeanne d’Arc (on a horse). She embodies France by declaring that insults towards France are like personal insults to her, and that she feels the people’s suffering as her own suffering. The viewer quickly comes to understand that the glorious image of France presented in the video is under threat, and that only Marine Le Pen, as a modern Jeanne d’Arc, can restore order in France. To achieve this, Le Pen sketches an idealized historical situation in which current political and societal issues did not yet exist; a France that got lost and to which she wants to return. She identifies with France, embodies French identity, and through her personal engagement with its problems, she is a true authentic leader. Her message is clear: your problems will be solved if ‘we’, the people, stick to our French roots – as opposed to external ‘corrupting’ forces that seek to destroy ‘our’ nation and culture (Figure 1).

Figure 1 . Stills from the campaign video featuring Marine Le Pen on horseback. Screenshots taken from the 2017 campaign video for Marine Le Pen on YouTube. The image on the left shows Le Pen on horseback (01:02), immediately followed by the statue of Jeanne d'Arc in Paris (image on the right, 01:04). Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYWnuQc5mYA.

The video exemplifies the role of French culture in the creation of populist ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ identities, but how precisely does this populist rhetoric frame broadly shared conceptualizations of the French? A clear manifestation of this process is the mainstreaming of the populist cultural myth in politics, transforming parties that once belonged to the political centre into what Eatwell and Goodwin (2018) labelled ‘national-populism lite’ (283). A telling example of this is the French right-wing party Les Républicains, appropriating in their electoral programme for the 2022 presidential elections elements of far-right discourse, namely birth rates, immigration and precarious neighbourhoods. More concretely, the party points at the declining French population as a major risk for the future success of the French nation, a vision not too different from Le Pen’s as expressed in her campaign video. To boost stagnating birth rates, presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse proposed financial support schemes for families with children, while rejecting immigration as a solution. Her concern with birth rates is remarkably close to the Great Replacement discourse on the French Far Right, most notably in the party of Eric Zemmour. This theory asserts that the French nation will be reverse-colonized by Muslim immigrant populations, who generally have larger families than ‘native’ French families. Echoing populist narratives of a people experiencing an existential crisis caused by a dangerous Other, this case illustrates how mainstream politics has embraced populist cultural frames.

The examples reveal that aesthetic and political forms do indeed overlap and interact (Levine 2015), suggesting that a cultural studies perspective is essential to appreciate the prevailing success of populism. The populist engagement with culture is effective as it taps into concrete and generally familiar images, embodying a shared cultural community represented by an authentic leader. The next section will further explore the people’s identification with the populist leader based on this cultural connection.

Populist Leader Identification

In her campaign video, Le Pen makes the point that the French people is suffering from an existential crisis, and proposes to restore the order by turning back to a nostalgic cultural picture of France. This section will look at the following step in the populist myth, namely the people’s vindication, made possible by the populist leader. More precisely, it will focus on the populist leader presenting themselves as allies of the people, against their common enemies, by creating an emotional bond. This dynamic follows the idea of a shared social identity of the in-group (Tajfel and Turner 1979; Reicher et al. 2018), that is, a sense of belonging that sets them apart from the non-belonging out-group. Leadership is then a form of ‘social identity management’ (Reicher et al. 2018: 129), actively cultivating feelings of togetherness within the in-group. Hameleers and Schmuck (2017) argue that the attribution of blame in populist messages allows to depict the in-group as innocent victims of an incompetent, corrupt or evil out-group, and the more the audience identifies with the populist leader, the better the message comes across.

Casullo (2019) distinguishes four discursive scripts for populist leadership: the patriotic soldier, the social leader, the successful businessman, and the strong woman. What these scripts have in common, is that they all diverge from the career politician, embodying different forms of outsider-ness. Casullo notes that this element is crucial in the populist leader’s self-narrative; their entry to politics is not a matter of personal ambition, but a moral obligation, a self-sacrifice motivated by their true love for the people (58). In this sense, the populist leader is distinct from mainstream politicians, due to their honest motivations and out-of-the-box perspective on political issues, one that is closer to that of the people.

Populist leaders thus place themselves on the side of the people rather than as part of the political establishment, and identify with their electorate through their self-representation as ordinary citizens (Moffitt 2019; Shayegh 2022). The stronger this shared social identity, the more powerful it becomes; in fact, ‘it is not resources that lead to power but strength of shared identity’ (Haslam et al. 2012: 209). Ostiguy and Moffitt (2020) aptly describe the populist leader as ‘both father and (older) brother. He is like me, but better than me.’ (61). Populist leadership is personalistic, that is, ‘the authority of the leader derives from the followers’ beliefs in her exceptionality and not from her ability to follow institutional procedures or climb through the party ranks’ (Casullo 2019: 55). Furthermore, Ostiguy and Moffitt (2020) explain the strong identification with the populist leader through their embodiment of the sociocultural low, and their being ‘from here’ (62). The former element refers to populists’ repertoire of ‘bad manners’ (Moffitt 2019), which is defined as the use of inappropriate language and general political incorrectness. The latter emphasizes their closeness to the people, through their cultural background and their anti-cosmopolitan mindset.

The populist leader’s connection with the people is thus based on feelings of closeness, familiarity and love, but Ostiguy and Moffitt (2020) note that that this is not the full story:

The performance, including the traits, words, and particular practices of the populist leader, is meant to emphasize the politically desired societal cleavage; by focusing ire on a social Other, the populist promises to remove the obstacle that prevents communitary fullness. (Ostiguy and Moffitt 2020: 63–64)

This presence of negative emotions towards the people’s Other is further supported in the work of Demertzis (2019) and Rico et al. (2017), who suggest that ‘power emotions’ such as anger and efficacy (the belief in one’s own political influence) play an important role in the mobilization of populist support. As such, angry individuals who have lost hope in mainstream politics are most inclined to support populist parties. This anger is evoked through the repeated narration of the people’s suffering of an existential crisis, in which narratives of humiliation play an important role (Homolar and Löfflmann 2021). Humiliation narratives appeal to fantasies of a lost glorious past and a shared victimhood, implying positive emotions such as pride and hope as well as the negative emotions anger, shame and dishonour. To overcome these feelings of loss, shame and humiliation, the populist leader is to fix the people’s crisis of community by casting the blame on the people’s out-groups.

Working on far-right populism, Wodak (2015) notes that this practice of scapegoating is motivated by narratives of fear and insecurity, leading to the creation and exploitation of rigid dichotomies of good versus bad. These fear scenarios include both the loss of material goods (jobs, housing, healthcare provisions, social safety nets) as well as changing immaterial conditions (cultural norms and values). Populist fear narratives resonate in the Brexit debates and Donald Trump’s rhetoric, and appeal to the notion of ontological security discussed above (Homolar and Scholz 2019; Kinnvall and Svensson 2022). The proposed solution is a return to a more traditional way of life and a dismissal of cultural Others, who are seen as threats.

Let us now take another look at the example of Marine Le Pen, and how culture is at the heart of her articulation of positive emotions towards the French people and negative emotions towards its Other. For instance, Marine Le Pen’s identification with the cult figure of Jeanne d’Arc evokes feelings of national pride and unity against a common enemy. By referring to Jeanne d’Arc, Le Pen draws a historical parallel, suggesting that similar to 700 years ago, France is being invaded by foreign warriors, against whom direct action needs to be taken. Furthermore, Le Pen’s embodiment of the young, courageous and self-sacrificing figure of Jeanne d’Arc is in line with Casullo’s (2019) discursive script of the populist leader as strong woman. This narrativizes Le Pen as part of a French tradition of strong female leaders, who, out of a deeply felt love, take the country’s fate in their own hands. In this mission, she is joined by her followers’ desire to revive France’s glorious past, a France that they can feel proud of.

The presence of cultural objects in the populist narrative can thus further elicit its affective response. Focusing on the effect of literature, Felski (2008) emphasizes the importance of enchantment and shock, two opposite emotional reactions to a text. It is the reader who plays a key role in this process: ‘Texts […] are unable to act directly on the world, but only via the intercession of those who read them’ (18). Connecting this to the work of Levine (2015), it is via the reader that literary forms can travel to social and political realities, and vice versa. Looking at the example of Michel Houellebecq’s Soumission (2015) and its appearance in political narratives, Le Pen makes use of the shock effect generated by the novel to convince voters of Islam’s potential danger for France’s sovereignty, culture and traditions. In the novel, Houellebecq depicts a future France on the verge of Islamization, after the fictional Mohamed Ben Abbes wins the 2022 presidential elections. Within a few months, France becomes an Islamic Republic, with women losing their jobs, and polygamy being introduced. The book was labelled as Islamophobic because of its stereotypical representation of Islam, as well as the unrealistic suggestion that Islam could take over in France in such a dramatic manner. At the same time, Le Pen and fellow far-right politicians interpreted the book as a warning for the danger of Islam, and more particularly the incapacity of the political establishment to respond to this perceived threat. The appearance of the novel on a reading list of Rassemblement National (in the category ‘formation générale’), reveals the reading of the novel as a political essay, overlooking its literary complexity. Likewise, shock is also used by left-wing politicians to stigmatize Houellebecq as a demagogue and a puppet of the Far Right, presenting a danger to France’s democracy.

It should be noted that despite the presence of positive emotions, Marine Le Pen’s narrative remains problematic for two reasons. First, the presence of fear and anger, used to shape populist constructions of the French people vs. its Others are ultimately creating more division than togetherness. According to the pioneering work of Panksepp (2010) and Asma and Gabriel (2019) anger and fear allude to the instinctive fight-or-flight response respectively, and in both cases the distance between the two groups increases. In practice, this generates a strong animosity against the Other (political elites or Muslim minorities), and the appeal to fear or anger legitimizes the exclusion of both groups. Second, the positive emotions of solidarity, familiarity and closeness in Le Pen’s narrative are limited to the members of the so-called people and their spokespersons, and do not extend to the ‘evil’ elites or ‘dangerous’ cultural or religious Others. This means that while Le Pen may present herself as a force of hope – to solve France’s existential crisis – her exclusionary message restricts the possibility of hope to the ‘lucky few’. The next section will further reflect on the democratic challenges posed by such exclusionary narratives, using the notion of equaliberty (Balibar 2014), and consider the potential of more inclusive cultural counter-narratives.

Challenging Exclusion: Towards an Equaliberal Narrative

Equaliberty denotes the preposition that equality and liberty are inherently entangled, meaning that any form of equality presupposes some degree of freedom, and vice versa (Balibar 2014). Consequently, Balibar argues that the elimination of either equality or liberty automatically excludes the existence of the other:

l am not afraid of being contradicted here, either by the history of capitalist exploitation, which by negating in practice the equality proclaimed in the labour contract ends up in the practical negation of freedom of speech and expression, or by the history of socialist regimes that, by suppressing public freedoms, end up constituting a society of privileges and reinforced inequalities. (Balibar 2014: 49)

The degree to which equality is to be free, or freedom equal, however, is the terrain of constant and complex struggle; in fact, Balibar adds that a truly democratic negotiation of what ‘freedom’ means can only take place once social equality is achieved. In other words, as long as minorities are socially marginalized, any cultural definition of freedom proposed by the majority is bound to be unilateral. Referring back to the situation of populism, the negotiation of freedom in society should take into account a variety of perspectives, rather than promoting the hegemonic view of the people over others.

Looking back at Le Pen’s campaign video, its message could be loosely translated as ‘more for the French, and less for the Others’. She dismisses the elites, who allegedly spend too much taxpayer’s money on the EU, social benefits for immigrants and public broadcasting, and stands up against immigrants who are seen to culturally transform the country. In other words, Le Pen seeks to protect the French people and their freedom, at the expense of non-belonging Others whose freedom is being jeopardized. In this sense, her discourse champions freedom but not equality, as this populist definition of freedom is only accessible for certain parts of the population. As such, the populist interpretation of freedom suppresses not-like-minded Others, leading to inequality, and can therefore not be completely free according to Balibar’s definition of equaliberty.

This discussion of equaliberty links to the widely debated issue of populism’s compatibility with democratic values. Following Laclau (2005), populism seeks to restore an unfair system, and could therefore be seen as a corrective for democracy. Mouffe’s notion of agonism follows this line of thinking, proposing a democratic landscape in which ‘multiple and competing forms of identifications’ coexist and enter in conflict (Mouffe 2009: 56). Other scholars strongly disagree with this view, considering populism’s dichotomous worldview and neglect of minority rights as a threat to human rights (Rosanvallon 2011; Müller 2016; Alston 2017). I propose here that the concept of equaliberty can serve as a tool to evaluate both populist and non-populist narratives. Populism generally opposes to a strongly globalized neoliberal world order governed by technocratic politics, generating and reproducing strong disparities between the rich and the poor (Finchelstein 2017; Rodrik 2017; Eatwell and Goodwin 2018; Moffitt 2019). In that sense, the political status quo is equally problematic; there is freedom but not equality. Hence, populist and neoliberal discourses have a similar effect, both leading to an unequal access to freedom and thus lacking equaliberty. The question, then, is not whether populism is democratic or undemocratic, but whether democratic society leaves sufficient room for the creation and articulation of counter-narratives, that balance the notions of equality and liberty. In the following, I will discuss the notion of artivism as a mode of artistic and political engagement that, I will argue, could serve as a laboratory for developing such cultural counter-narratives.

The search for new narratives that tackle the shortcomings of prevalent worldviews is certainly not new. Over the past years, several economists and social scientists openly questioned unbridled neoliberalism, holding it accountable for the growing income and capital disparities, unequal career opportunities, and technocracy (Piketty 2014, 2020; Sandel 2020) the gender gap, global warming, and racism (Arruzza et al. 2019) and mental issues such as stress and loneliness (Hertz 2020). In denouncing neoliberalism as well as the solutions proposed by populism, these authors suggest alternative policies that could improve society as a whole. Such narratives typically present an alternative to cultures of fear, by focusing on positive affects such as solidarity (Hertz 2020; Sandel 2020) and compassion (Bloom 2016).

Considering the imaginative and transformative power of art, as well as the link between artistic production and storytelling, it makes sense to explore the potential of artivism in producing new societal narratives. Artivism is defined as ‘a hybrid neologism that signifies work created by individuals who see an organic relationship between art and activism’ (Sandoval and Latorre 2008: 82). The artivist, a contraction of artist and activist, ‘uses her artistic talents to fight and struggle against injustice and oppression’ (Asante 2008: 6). Challenging patterns of Islamophobia, xenophobia or racism in society, and providing new models of community-building and social agency, artivism fits well within the framework of ‘performative democracy’ proposed by Weibel (2015) or that of ‘aesthetic resilience’ (Steinbock et al. 2021). It covers forms of what could be labelled ‘high’ culture, for example the digital artworks of Chicana artist Judy Baca (Sandoval and Latorre 2008), as well as more popular genres, such as cyber music (Silverman 2020). The field of literature could be another area of interest, especially given the close relationship the reader develops with the protagonists. In that sense, literary texts can foster solidarity and compassion with individuals or groups that readers would otherwise only encounter in the news or on social media, where they are usually depicted less poetically (Keen 2007; Felski 2008; Meretoja 2017).

An example of artivist literature could be Bernardine Evaristo’s award-winning novel Girl, Woman, Other (2019). On her web page, Evaristo describes herself as ‘a longstanding activist for inclusion in the arts, initiating many successful projects to address the under-representation of people of colour’.² In her book, the reader encounters twelve mostly Black, female characters in separate chapters, whose life stories are interconnected. The characters are all marginalized in society in their own way – through (a combination of) their Blackness, gender, sexuality, or social class (Sarıkaya-Şen 2021). By giving a voice to characters that are too often silenced in contemporary society, the novel provides an intersectional perspective on the place of Black women and non-binary people in Britain. Sarıkaya-Şen (2021) argues that the book successfully emancipates these individuals by presenting an optimistic alternative to the status quo, presenting a ‘transmodern, plural and inclusive cultural world that intermingles various cultures and respects otherness and difference’ (307). Importantly, the characters are portrayed not as powerless victims, but as resilient individuals who care for and help each other. This alludes to an ideal transnational and transcultural feminism that is not limited to the concerns of white Western women, but that englobes the stories of strong and resilient individuals despite their mutual differences. The novel can be considered an example of polyphony (Bakhtin 1984), consisting of different voices that together form the book’s main message. In doing so, it reflects as well as shapes the idea of a counter-narrative that is diverse and inclusive.

Girl, Woman, Other makes use of positive emotions to promote the idea of togetherness. But how exactly does this link to the notion of equaliberty discussed above? First of all, the novel centralizes an inclusive, egalitarian community of women and non-binary people who help and trust each other. This idea of plurality is further reflected in the reader’s encounter with a diverse group of Black characters and their particular struggles related to widespread racism and Othering practices in society. Through reading such a variety of life-narratives, and discovering how these narratives are interconnected in a non-hierarchical manner, the novel actively engages with the notion of equality.

In addition to this, the topic of liberty becomes relevant as the novel addresses important issues in society that limit the freedom of (groups of) individuals. In Girl, Woman, Other, this societal critique is aimed at the patriarchal, capitalist and colonial structures that oppress certain groups in society and limit their freedom. Through its form, diverse characters and the life-stories that are told, the novel implicitly criticizes the pervasive hierarchical binaries that are the result of systemic sexism and racism. In doing so, it offers a space to reflect on the complexity of identity, going beyond reductionist binary conceptions of gender, sexuality and race that are so prevalent in both populist and non-populist ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ narratives. With its diverse cast and optimistic account of Black female experience, the novel provides an interesting thought experiment that could inspire many politicians to think outside of suffocating frames into the direction of an equaliberal counter-narrative.

Conclusion

The aim of this paper has been to examine how populism interacts with culture, in the shaping and circulating of a populist myth (Casullo 2020). In doing so, it focused on two elements, namely the narration of the people suffering a cultural or identitary crisis, and the populist leader’s identification with the people based on a shared cultural narrative. Zooming in on the narrative of the French far-right populist Marine Le Pen, the final part of this paper introduced the notion of equaliberty both as a tool to evaluate populist narratives, and a starting point for what could become a counter-narrative.

This has led to three main findings. First, populism uses concrete manifestations of culture to shape their myth of a suffering people in need of vindication. In the example of Le Pen, this allows to frame the French people as a culturally distinct and authentic group, whose existence is threatened by external forces such as Muslim Others and self-serving elites. As soon as populist narratives become repeatedly articulated and amplified in politics and the media, they shape commonly held cultural assumptions about ‘us’ vs. ‘them’. In this sense, populism is a phenomenon that continuously reinforces itself: slowly but surely the mainstream becomes more populist, which forces populists to distinguish themselves from the – so despised – mainstream and to alter their narrative. It is for this reason that it is all the more necessary to be critical of exclusionary narratives that circulate in society, whether populist or not, and, for the sake of democracy, to make sure that there is room for counter-narratives.

Second, the populist leader’s identification with the people, based on shared cultural values, norms and behaviours, evokes positive emotions including love, solidarity and pride, while the people’s antagonistic relationship with its Other is marked by negative emotions such as anger, fear and dishonour. As I have shown, culture plays a key role in this process of shaping the identities of the morally good Self as opposed to an evil Other. A problematic feature of Marine Le Pen’s populist myth is her promotion of freedom only for those belonging to the in-group, as has been illustrated with Balibar’s notion of equaliberty. Thus, Le Pen’s narrative champions liberty but not equality, making freedom unequally accessible. While equaliberty could work as an indicator to evaluate both populist as well as counter-narratives, the notion needs to be further theorized to define the required levels of equality and liberty and to address the issue of subjectivity.

Third, cultural production could serve as a creative laboratory to explore alternative, equaliberal, narratives. I suggested that artivism (Sandoval and Latorre 2008; Silverman 2020) is a fruitful mode of engagement to further shape such counter-narratives. Acknowledging the imaginative and transformative powers of art and literature, and taking into account artists’ and authors’ talent for innovative forms of storytelling, this can be a breeding ground for new equaliberal narratives.

While this paper provided a theoretical perspective on the populist engagement with culture, more research is needed to further systematize and test its findings in an empirical setting. I offer two methodological directions in which this could be done. First, large datasets of political communication could allow to map the specific characteristics of populist narratives, in terms of their use of culture to narrate the people’s crisis and to foster leadership identification. Comparisons could be drawn between so-called left-wing and right-wing populists, populist or non-populist politicians, and between different countries and continents. Such research could deepen our understanding of how various political and cultural forms cooperate in creating and maintaining hierarchies of good and bad.

Lastly, more empirical research could be done to analyze people’s affective response to populist narratives. For example, a study by Rooduijn et al. (2016) finds that when confronted with populist narratives, voters report higher levels of political discontent, which is a predictor for a populist vote. This suggests that populist narratives have a strong self-perpetuating effect, which is in line with my earlier conceptualization of populism and culture reinforcing each other. Finally, to address the challenges that exclusionary populism poses to our democracies, it is crucial that scholars acknowledge the importance of culture, and that they, together with other public figures, take an active role in promoting equaliberal counter-narratives.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable and constructive feedback. I am grateful to my colleagues, Professor Pablo Valdivia Martin and Alberto Godioli for their insightful comments to an earlier version of this paper. I wrote most of this paper during a research fellowship at King’s College, London, under the supervision of Professor Catherine Boyle. Many thanks for offering such an inspiring environment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Clip de campagne officiel Marine 2017, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYWnuQc5mYA. Accessed on 24 February 2022.

2 Source: https://bevaristo.com/activism/#:~:text=I%20am%20a%20longstanding%20activist,representation%20of%20people%20of%20colour.andtext=2022%20%E2%80%93%20Curator%20of%20the%20second,with%20Hamish%20Hamilton%2FPenguin%20UK (accessed on 28 January 2022).