Revisiting The Revolt of the Masses in an Age of Global Populism

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Nearly ninety years after its original publication, José Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses once again appears eerily timely. Present political discourse is saturated with the conviction that we, like Ortega, are living through a period of ‘mass revolt’ against ‘elites’. According to this view, 'the masses' and the populist political forces that they support have subjected a range of longstanding liberal-democratic traditions, customs, and institutions to existential threat. The solution, broadly construed, typically involves containing ‘the masses’ through the recalibration of democratic politics. But in order to achieve this end, one must understand precisely who ‘the masses’ are, what their ‘revolt’ signifies, and how it can be assuaged without violating the basic principles of liberal democracy itself. Ortega’s The Revolt of the Masses deals with precisely these questions and conundrums. However, while the book enjoyed decades of international renown following its 1930 publication, it has since fallen into relative neglect among political theorists.

This panel revisits the theme of masses in revolt, both in Ortega and beyond, in the context of resurgent global populism. What does it mean for masses to be in revolt? What might some solutions be to this problem? Or, are revolting masses even a problem at all? In exploring these questions, the panel seeks to recover arguments contained in Ortega’s influential text, to situate them vis-a-vis more familiar canonical touchstones, to assess Ortega’s relevance for grappling with present political dynamics, and to consider the theme of ‘the masses’ more generally.

The papers that comprise this panel, therefore, double as explorations of Ortega’s thought and reflections on the current challenges posed by ‘populism’, broadly construed. Angélica Maria Bernal interrogates ‘historical conscience’ as a motivating force for populist revolution, putting Ortega’s critique of the ‘mass-man’ into fruitful conversation with the thought of Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui. Hugo Drochon explores how French political theorist Raymond Aron synthesized Ortega’s Nietzschean call for a new elite with the thought of Pareto, Mosca, and Michels, thereby situating Ortega within the tradition of classical elite theory and suggesting how he inspired Aron’s framework for analyzing elite politics. Approaching the elite-mass dichotomy from the opposite angle, Alec Dinnin wrestles with Ortega’s theorization of humiliation as a solution to the revolt of the masses and examines its relationship to his larger liberal commitments. Brendon Westler attends to the more aesthetic dimensions of mass revolt, demonstrating that Ortega’s The Dehumanization of Art, when read in tandem with The Revolt of the Masses, can illuminate the politics of contemporary ‘alt-right’ iconography. Taken together, these papers contribute theoretical insights to present-day debates surrounding global populism and testify to Ortega’s enduring importance for the study of political theory.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 1: Political Thought and Philosophy: Historical Approaches

Individual Presentations

• Ortega y Gasset, Mariategui, and the Historicity of Mass Revolution - Angelica Maria Bernal, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

• Ortega y Gasset, Liberalism, and the Humiliation of the Masses - Alec Francis Dinnin, University of Florida

• Between Nietzsche and Pareto: Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses - Hugo Drochon, University of Nottingham

• Subversive Aesthetics: José Ortega y Gasset and the Revolt of the Alt-Right - Brendon Westler, St. Olaf College

Chair

• Paulina Ochoa Espejo Haverford College

Discussant

• Bernard Yack Brandeis University