The Affective Logic of Populism: Trust, Distrust, and the Productivity of Conflict

ConTrust International Workshop, AG 5

Hosted by Pavan Malreddy and Johannes Voelz

This conference assembles leading international scholars with expertise in political emotions and affects. Coming from a broad range of disciplines, including cultural geography, social psychology, sociology, anthropology, discourse studies, and political science, the speakers will explore the affective dimensions of the constellations of trust and distrust at work in contemporary populism and authoritarianism. Starting from the premise that populism and authoritarianism share global family resemblances that have to be contextualized with regional and historical specificity, the conference facilitates a debate between perspectives from the Global South and North.

Conceptually, we start from the premise that populist and authoritarian formations are held together by the interplay of organized internal trust and external distrust. We will explore the hypothesis that this interplay operates according to identifiable affective logics. Internally, trust is demanded and enforced through appeals to loyalty and solidarity, but trust is also generated through affective experiences ranging from ressentiment and rage to enthusiasm and love. These affects of internal trust are mobilized in conjunction with affects of distrust along friend/enemy lines. While the constellation of internal trust and external distrust has been explored from a range of scholarly perspectives, our conference contributes to a more detailed analysis of the range of affects at play as well as their internal logic. From this starting point, we also hope to be able to shed light on those ranges of affect that do not seem to fit neatly into the schema of internal trust/external distrust. Experiences such as apathy, boredom, and the simultaneous experience of joy and fear also belong to the affective repertoires of populism and authoritarianism, yet how they relate to the more widely discussed features of the populist and authoritarian experience so far has remained largely unexplained.

Program (pdf): Click here…

Abstracts

Ben Anderson
Professor of Geography
Durham University, UK

Title: Populism and the Promise of Intensity

Abstract: “Boring!” Donald Trump declared in a tweet whilst watching the Democratic presidential debate. His judgment was by no means the first time he had claimed an opponent were boring. Populists of the right regularly utter what is now one of the most common aesthetic judgments. Their rhetoric and style and campaign imaginary also feature scenes of ordinary flatness and lingering boredom as they perform a renewed everyday intensity in comparison to the supposed boredom of ordinary life. This paper argues that the distinction from being boring, and the interruption of boredom, has been central to the post-2008 affective promise of US and UK right-wing populism. Right-wing populism is a politics of national optimism and affective excess which, in part, responds to the unequal distribution of flatness by promising that everyday life will feel different, feel more. I argue that this heralds a new promise of intensity, and explore how it intersect with the other affective appeals and xenophobic and other promises which compose contemporary right-wing populism.

Vera King and Ferdinand Sutterlüty
Sigmund Freud-Institut Frankfurt
Goethe-University Frankfurt
ConTrust / Institut für Sozialforschung

Title: On Destructive Authoritarianism: Some Empirical Findings and Conceptual Considerations

Abstract: Our paper, based on an ongoing pre-study at the Sigmund Freud Institute and the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, explores new forms of authoritarianism that invoke democratic values but at the same time performatively deny and fight them. We examine a destructive negativism that manifests itself in a fundamental rejection of established institutions, which the actors confront with generalized distrust. In doing so, we reconstruct the sometimes repressed, sometimes overt aggression that is often associated with apocalyptic images and projections. The corresponding worldviews, in which there is no longer any space for democratic deliberation, are, as we show, rooted in life trajectories and reinforced by contemporary populist movements.

Ricardo Pagliuso Regatieri
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Federal University of Bahia, Brazil

Title: The Affective Logic of ‘Bolsonarism’

Abstract: Upon the rise to power of far-right-wing parties in Europe in the first half of the 20^th century, authors affiliated with the Institute of Social Research (later known as the Frankfurt School) shed light on the socially channeled emotional energies invested in authoritarian movements. While political violence and authoritarian regimes never vanished from the global map, after the Second World War until recently, they were concentrated in the global periphery. Core countries, on the other hand, experienced a welfare state followed by its neoliberal dismantling. In the early 21^st century, right-wing authoritarian leaders, movements and parties have been haunting the political landscape in places as diverse as Poland, India, Brazil, Italy, the United States, the Philippines, Hungary and El Salvador. Moving to erode democracy from within upon being democratically elected, they have been referred to as (neo)fascist, (neo)populist, soft authoritarian and the like. Deploying techniques from 20^th-century fascism and populism – analogous to latter’s mastering of the novel communicational tool represented by the radio – they have mastered new digital media, recasting lies and conspiracy theories. However, in each country, a specific struggle for the nation is taking place. This presentation discusses the affective logic behind the discourse of Brazilian far-right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro and his followers (the discourse of ‘Bolsonarism’) by critically analyzing its content and the historical grounds upon which it builds.

Pierre Ostiguy
Professor of Politics
Universidad de Valparaíso (Chile)

Title: The Objects of Emotions in Populism: Sameness and Otherness with Proper Names

Abstract: As important as the specific nature of the emotions displayed in certain political logics is the object to which these sentiments and affects are attached. From the subject’s standpoint, the nature of the specific emotions felt is a product of such objects. In the case of the logic of populism, I argue that three objects are affectively and cognitively central: “the people”, the leader, and the (Otherized) Social Other. Despite what most of the literature has affirmed about populism, “the elite” (negatively perceived, to be sure) is not as emotionally central. The pair of internal trust and external distrust acts as a constitutive logic in populism. I argue that such a pair is itself the product of a specific affective logic: the (collective) narcissism attached to sameness and a constitutive antagonism towards a not only nefarious but malevolent Social Other. The leader partakes of and fuels that same narcissism –which in his case (as with Trump, Chavez or Perón) is moreover also about him. The Other, it must be emphasized, cannot be trusted in conflict –because it is essentially malevolent. While not the only political phenomenon with such a view, populists do not believe that trust in conflict is wise, or even possible. Regarding specific feelings, love towards one’s own people and towards the (redemptive) leader is certainly central. Distrust and dislike of the nefarious Social Other, resented and not fully deserving–whether it is a foreignized oligarchy, as in left-populism, or culturally distinct immigrants, as in right-populism–are equally prominent. The modal contrast to the populist pattern described is perhaps Habermas’ ideal speech situation, where arguments are assessed independently of the nature or status of the utterer. I argue that in the populist logic the nature of the utterer is almost everything, while the arguments are comparatively secondary. For that reason, the problem is not solely one of sameness and otherness, but that such sameness and otherness have proper names.

Regina Schidel and Andreas Schindel
Goethe-University Frankfurt
ConTrust / Institut für Politikwissenschaft

Title: The Affective Dimension of Epistemic Trust

Abstract: In our talk we aim at elaborating the systematic connection between three phenomena, i.e. epistemic trust, affects and populist movements. The concept of epistemic trust refers to trust in the knowledge of others, for example in the expertise of scientists. Since trust relations are characterized by an element of uncertainty (we have to trust as our own knowledge is limited) they cannot be understood in cognitive terms alone but have also an affective side. The affective moment of trust gets relevant for the case of epistemic trust, too: When we trust the physician to cure our disease, emotional stances like hope, confidence or gratitude might play a role in how we evaluate his/her competence. On the contrary, the distrust of the so-called “Querdenker” in virologists may be influenced by fear or feelings of powerlessness. In exploring how trust in knowledge or knowledge-based trust is intertwined with affects, emotions and feelings, we take a closer look at its political dimension. Our hypothesis is that democratic political movements and populist authoritarian movements differ decisively in their affective and epistemic grammar. Whereas democratic movements work on establishing epistemic trust, as they affirm conflicts of knowledge within the movement, populism transcends such epistemic trust. In trying to eradicate vulnerability and to restore (broken) sovereignty, in populist movements trust is replaced by a dynamic of distrust that tends to reinforce itself through affective drives like fear, anger or resentment.

Ulrike Flader
Institut für Ethnologie und Kulturwissenschaft (IfEK),
Postdoc in Bremen Excellence Chair Group “Soft Authoritarianisms”

Title: On Fear, Apathy and Hope: Understanding Soft Authoritarianism in Turkey through Affects

Abstract: Over recent years we have been witnessing a severe erosion of democracy from within. These developments have variably been approached in terms of populism, illiberalism or democratic backsliding. In contrast, this paper makes use of the concept of soft authoritarianism. Arguing that soft authoritarianism has to be understood as a specific logic of governing, this approach focusses on the ways in which authoritarian and seemingly democratic practices are combined to undermine any democratic substance. The current Turkish government can be very well described in these terms.

‘Soft’ thereby does not mean a total absence of violence, but rather aims at grasping how this form of rule cunningly tries to draw legitimacy, guise, and model its practices through seemingly democratic means. It points to flexible and fluid forms of governing that allow for adaptation making them not only initially hard to recognize, but also prove to be quite durable. This approach suggests that repression and fear, bans and imprisonment are therefore not the sole means by which the regime manages to dismantles procedures of power-sharing. Instead, this paper aims at showing how this cunning and flexible form of soft authoritarian governing enables an affective management of the opposition, which produces a limbo between apathy and hope. In doing so, the paper tries to deepen Juan Linz’ reference to apathy as a major difference between totalitarianism and authoritarianism, but also contribute to an understanding of this specific style of government which goes beyond a Gramscian notion of the production of consent.

Ajay Gudavarthy
Professor of Politics
Jawaharlal Nehru University, Dehli

Title: Politics, Ethics and Emotions in ‘New India’

Abstract: Emotions are not only experiential but deeply evaluative. Emotions work in close relation to everyday ethics. Emotions under the current populist surge are serving two fundamental purposes

• In modern-complex societies that are socially differentiated and fragmented they work to breach social fragmentation in order to create the imagination of unified `authentic people`. Specificity of identities is supplanted by commonality and shared meanings. In this difference is equated with prejudice and prejudice is converted into neutralized/lateral cultural practices.
• Emotions create a new fault line between the political and the non-political. Political is internally reworked to the imperatives of the personal, the intimate and the spiritual. Political is reduced to `instrumental rationality` and interests and the intimate is equated to the sacred.

My paper will delve into the workings of a range of emotions and ethics including fear, anxiety, hatred, anger, hope, rage, silence, tyag(sacrifice), seva (service) and samrastha (harmony). Each of these emotions is woven around multiple narratives, campaigns and slogans. They attempt to connect memory, civil/cultural codes that invoke continuity with civilizational ethos, religious practices, and nationalist imageries. The paper will attempt to show how all of this has contributed to manufacturing what I refer to as hierarchical solidarities and polarized differences, while simultaneously appropriating the essence of progressive and radical transformative discourses through civil performance.