What Is Antipopulism? Cultural Dimensions of Institutional and Class Resistance to Populism

• In Event: 2129 - Populism and Civic Cultures in a Global Context

Abstract

This paper approaches populism using the Strong Program in cultural sociology, especially civil sphere theory. It offers new theoretical and conceptual tools to understand the interplay between populism and resistance. The paper argues that the populism and antipopulism are mutually-reinforcing discursive, moral, and emotive positions because of the logic and structure of the civil sphere. Populism is an internal to the civil sphere that explains its intelligibility and acceptance as a redemptory feature of democracy, but also an existential threat. Populism becomes plebiscitarianism – strong-handed, acclamatory rule without regard to rule of law – when it stakes out outposts among the regulative and communicative institutions of the civil sphere and renders those interacting with nonpopulist institutions as uncivil. But, even though this “backlash” (Alexander 2018) shrinks the civil sphere, it is sustained through the new performative and discursive structures that emerge between leaders, followers, and audiences, intensifying the emotional stakes of countering populism altogether. In resisting populism, actors are forced to reconsider inequalities – especially class – in ways that attempt to rebuild solidarity, but again, against the purported distortions of the regulative capacity of the civil sphere.

Author

• Celso M. Villegas, Kenyon College