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The Affective Modes of Right-Wing Populism: Trump Pedagogy and Lessons for Democratic Education

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Abstract

This paper argues that it is important for educators in democratic education to understand how the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, the United States and around the world can never be viewed apart from the affective investments of populist leaders and their supporters to essentialist ideological visions of nationalism, racism, sexism and xenophobia. Democratic education can provide the space for educators and students to think critically and productively about people’s affects, in order to identify the implications of different affective modes through which right-wing populism is articulated. Furthermore, this paper points out that ‘negative’ critique of the affective ideology of right-wing populism is not sufficient for developing a productive counter politics. An affirmative critique is also needed to set alternative frames and agendas which endorse and disseminate alternative concepts and affective practices such as equality, love and solidarity. These ideas provide critical resources to democratic education for developing a culture and process of democracy that transcends the negativity of mere critique of either right-wing populisms or inadequate forms of democracy.

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Notes

  1. Needless to say, there have been several critiques of Laclau’s theory of populism. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss extensively these critiques, however, it is important to acknowledge some of those—e.g. that Laclau’s account is based on an understanding of populism as rhetoric; that his account implicitly endorses an authoritarian view of power; that he portrays people as a homogeneous, passive and unreflective group; or that he ignores the complexity of horizontal antagonism among ‘the common people’ (e.g. see Müller, 2016). However, as I discuss here, the value of Laclau’s account is undeniable in terms of providing a number of concepts that help us theorize the form and content of populism as a deeply political phenomenon and act.

  2. A fundamental assumption in which I ground my analysis here is Anderson’s claim (in Kemmer et al., 2019) that we should not grant emotion or affect any special explanatory power or a special status by putting aside other modes of inquiry, but rather to explore how affective modes of inquiry “discern the geo-historically specific apparatuses, encounters, and conditions through which affective life becomes organized” (ibid., p. 26). In other words, one could engage in an analysis of right-wing populism from a variety of theoretical perspectives, none of which should be privileged; at the same time, it is important to acknowledge though that the affective turn creates openings for looking at the entanglements of power, politics and affectivity in educational theory and practice in ways that would have not be available in the absence of the affective turn.

  3. I am indebted to one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting this point.

  4. As Damluji (2019) argues, learning the lessons of nation-building in the past (e.g. national identities are important for people and are not going to be given up easily; those who value national identities are not all of them racists or nationalists) can actually help us create globalist identities that are more inclusive than they have been so far.

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Zembylas, M. The Affective Modes of Right-Wing Populism: Trump Pedagogy and Lessons for Democratic Education. Stud Philos Educ 39, 151–166 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-019-09691-y

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