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ABSTRACT
Populism of the twenty-first century, the paper argues, emerges from the aloofness of liberal democracy’s sober regimes of rationality. This results in political movements that are explicitly affective in their strategies, both on the right and the left of the political spectrum. However, while policy research claims that left- and right-wing populism ‘look alike’ (isomorphia), the paper shows that there is only one populist logic that exceeds demarcations of ‘left’ or ‘right’. Therefore, it introduces the concept of the populist moment to describe the structure of the populist logic that is shared by a variety of protest movements. As a feminist intervention in the field of populism studies, the paper, finally, discusses how Mouffe’s political theory conflates ‘left populism’ and radical democracy. In reference to Ranciére’s and Lorey’s conceptualizations of radical democracy the paper portrays how to democratize democracy beyond Mouffe’s hegemony theory.
Acknowledgements
I am thankful to the anonymous reviewer and the participants of the workshop on ‘Populism and Democratic Theory’ (Vienna, March 2019) whose critique helped to improve and sharpen the paper’s argument.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 With the metaphor of ‘sticky’ affects, Ahmed shows how social coherence depends on affective adherence: People need to ‘stick’ together in order to build a political community.
2 With the concept Verfassungspatriotismus (‘constitutional patriotism’) Habermas develops a rational form of attachment to one’s state that focuses on a sober and rational mindset that appreciates the values provided by liberal constitutionalism such as the rule of law, private autonomy and legal equality instead of an emotional adherence to one’s country.
3 This discussion is exemplified by Arendt’s and Habermas’ political theories: Whereas Arendt revitalizes the classic spatial concept to outline agonistic modes of politics, Habermas paradigmatically formulates the reversed spatiality of liberal democracy where politics is practiced within a sphere that also figuratively represents mechanisms of closure in contrast to space conceptualized as open, permeable, or even amorph (Gebhardt Citation2014, 48–61).
4 I use the data on PEGIDA collected by Vorländer, Herold, and Schäller (Citation2016) as well as Göttinger Institut für Demokratieforschung.
5 Podemos means ‘We can’ and SYRIZA stands for ‘Synaspismós Rizospastikís Aristerásuse’, meaning ‘Coalition of the Radical Left.’
6 Following Mouffe (Citation2005, Citation2018) I take a Eurocentric, or Western-centric, view on the analysis of populism since my main argument targets the relation between liberal democracy, populism, and affective orders. Hence, the populisms of Venezuela under Hugo Chávez, Bolivia under Evo Morales or Peru under Alberto Fujimori, which did not develop within established liberal-democratic frameworks, cannot be integrated. Laclau’s (Citation2005a, 87) theory, which has been developed against the backdrop of Peronism, is only used to understand a populist logic – more broadly defined as ‘the elite’ vs. ‘the underdog.’ I want to stress that these different populims emerged under culture- and history-specific terms that follow a different path than ‘Western’ populism (Mouffe Citation2018, 9f). However, these populisms would further underpin my argument about interlacing ‘leftist’ and ‘right-wing’ motifs within populist moments since all of them adhered to a Socialist, emancipatory ideology on the one side, but favoured national socio-political agendas and practiced an authoritarian, charismatic leadership on the other. These populisms, contrary to ‘Western’ versions, did, however, not depend on the ‘thick ideology’ of liberalism but developed a political programme based on a Marxist-Leninist/Socialist ideology.
7 Mouffe (Citation2018, 45) critiques this strand of radical democratic theory describing it as revolutionary and insurrectionist.
8 On occasion Mouffe theorizes about the role of migrants in the formation of racist politics; gender or a queer-feminist counter-hegemony, however, are not problematized or theorized at all.
9 For more information on the Spanish movements 15-M and Indignad@s: Antentas and Vivas (Citation2014), Galcerán (Citation2012), Sánchez Cedillo (Citation2012).
10 The critique of OWS on US fiscal and economy policies has been depicted, often from a conservative perspective, as anti-Semitic. During the protests in Lower Manhattan some protestors carried signs that linked the financial crisis to a supposedly Jewish dominance in US economy; interviews and online postings show blatant hate for the ‘Judeo-Capitalists’ and Kalle Lasn, head of Adbusters and part of the organizing committee of OWS, is notoriously referring to a ‘Jewish World Conspiracy.’ For a short overview on the discussion see Rubin (Citation2011), Berger (Citation2011).
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Mareike Gebhardt
Dr Mareike Gebhardt studied Political Science, Sociology, and Philosophy at the Universities of Trier, Wuerzburg, and Regensburg, and finished her PhD in Political Sciences in 2014. In her dissertation (Nomos 2014), she analyses modes of political action under a ‘postmodern condition’ in the works of Hannah Arendt and Juergen Habermas from a radical democratic perspective. After her PhD she has been postdoctoral fellow at Research Training Group 1718 ‘Presence and Tacit Knowledge’ (German Research Foundation); she received research funding by ‘Women’s Equality in Research and Teaching’ and Emerging Talents Initiative (both FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg). Currently, Mareike Gebhardt is employed at the Institute of Sociology at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg and works on a project regarding discourses of otherness in liberal-democratic migration regimes.