Authors:Lee Mandelo Abstract: disClosure: a Journal of Social Theoryappears in an altered form this year: a double-feature on Animals Studies and Queer Theory, consisting entirely of interviews and roundtables. Intending to respect the work of the guests and students from the pandemic-disrupted Social Theory spring seminar series, and to foster a collaborative spirit in challenging times, we arranged our special issue to gather two years of collegial conversations in one place. The interviews conducted with the guest scholars who came to speak in the Social Theory series range widely, placed alongside roundtables with the transdisciplinary faculty teams who organized, planned, and taught each seminar. PubDate: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 11:59:03 PDT
Authors:Harry F. Dahms Abstract: This paper serves three purposes relating to a lecture Adorno gave in 1967 on “the new right-wing extremism” that was on the rise then in West Germany; in 2019, the lecture was published in print for the first time in German, to wide acclaim, followed by an English translation that appeared in 2020. First, it is important to situate the lecture in its historical and political context, and to relate it to Adorno’s status as a critical theorist in West Germany. Secondly, Adorno’s diagnosis of the new right-wing extremism (and related forms of populism) and his conclusions about how to resist and counteract it are relevant to the current political situation in the United States, even though he presented his analysis more than half a century ago. Thirdly, Adorno’s lecture provided the model for a type of education that is oriented toward enabling students to face unpleasant facts about modern social life in constructive ways, including recognizing and resisting right-wing populism and extremism, in an age that imposes greater and greater uncertainty and challenges on individuals. In conclusion, it is evident that in a rapidly changing world, the “tricks” of right-wing populists and extremists are astonishingly unoriginal and static, which in part may explain their appeal and effectiveness. Reading the pedagogy Adorno suggested as a practical application of his critical theory highlights the importance of enabling individuals to recognize the “normalcy” of proliferating experiences of cognitive dissonance, and to respond to such experiences by adopting a productive rather than defeatist stance with regard to the increasing complexity and the intensifying contradictions of modern societies in the twenty-first century, as they are accompanied by myriad possibilities and threats. PubDate: Sat, 18 Jul 2020 04:52:17 PDT
Authors:Nancy Maclean et al. Abstract: Nancy MacLean is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University, and the award-winning author of several books, including Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan; Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace; The American Women’s Movement, 1945-2000: A Brief History with Documents; and Debating the American Conservative Movement: 1945 to the Present. She also served the editor of Scalawag: A White Southerner’s Journey through Segregation to Human Rights Activism.Her scholarship has received more than a dozen major prizes and awards, and has been supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowships Foundation.Her most recent book is Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. Democracy in Chains was a finalist for the National Book Award, and the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Current Affairs, the Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Award, and the Lillian Smith Book Award. The Nation magazine named it the “Most Valuable Book” of the year. PubDate: Sat, 18 Jul 2020 04:52:14 PDT
Authors:Michael Hameleers Abstract: Populism maintains a specific relationship with discourses of (un)truthfulness. Yet, although a growing body of research has explored the nature and effects of populist rhetoric, populism’s cultivation of reality and dishonesty has been under-theorized. In this paper, we explore three relationships between populism and (un)truthfulness: (1) the cultivation of a conspiracy theory in populist discourse; (2) populism’s denial or discrediting of expert knowledge or empirical information, and the legitimacy of journalism and mainstream sources of knowledge and (3) populist constructions of alternative truths that resonate with common sense and the experiences of the ordinary people. We further explore the effects of discourses of (un)truthfulness, and ways to combat the potentially negative political consequences of populist disinformation. Together, by exploring the discursive relationship between populism and (un)truthfulness, this paper aims to provide more detailed insights in how populist versions of reality and dishonesty that attack mainstream knowledge and interpretations may impact society and political decision-making. PubDate: Sat, 18 Jul 2020 04:52:11 PDT
Authors:Kenneth Roberts et al. Abstract: Kenneth M. Roberts is the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government and Binenkorb Director of Latin American Studies at Cornell University. His research and teaching interests focus on party systems, populism, social movements, and the politics of inequality in Latin America and beyond. He is the author of Changing Course in Latin America: Party Systems in the Neoliberal Era (Cambridge University Press) and Deepening Democracy' The Modern Left and Social Movements in Chile and Peru (Stanford University Press). He is also the co-editor of The Resurgence of the Latin American Left (Johns Hopkins University Press), The Diffusion of Social Movements (Cambridge University Press), and Beyond Neoliberalism' Patterns, Responses, and New Directions in Latin America and the Caribbean (Palgrave-MacMillan). PubDate: Sat, 18 Jul 2020 04:52:08 PDT
Authors:Judson C. Abraham Abstract: Some socialists criticize Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign, taking issue with the senator’s nationalism, vague presentation of socialism and revolution, and seeming preoccupation with class at the expense of attention to racism. This article draws from Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s theorization of populism to depict Sanders’s campaign as a legitimately socialist project. Laclau and Mouffe claim that left populism may evolve into socialism under certain conditions. One may expect Sanders’s populism to empower previously uncommitted people to make socialist demands. PubDate: Sat, 18 Jul 2020 04:52:05 PDT
Authors:María Pía Lara et al. Abstract: María Pía Lara is professor of philosophy at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana. She is also Co-director of the Prague Colloquium of Critical Theory. She has published essays and articles in International journals on Critical Theory, Politics, Ethics and Aesthetics, Feminism and Populism. She has written several books including: Moral Textures: Feminist Narratives in the Public Sphere (Los Angeles, Berkeley, San Diego: Polity Press, 1998 and Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1998); Narrating Evil: A Post-metaphysical Theory of Reflexive Judgment (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); The Disclosure of Politics: Struggles Over the Semantics of Secularization (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013); Beyond the Public Sphere: Film and the Feminist Imagination (Evanston, Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2020 Forthcoming). PubDate: Sat, 18 Jul 2020 04:52:02 PDT
Authors:Daniel Rueda Abstract: For most of the postwar period the idea of merging socialist (or popular) and nationalist elements was marginal in Europe. But in the last two decades we have been witnessing a new form of social-national synthesis: nationalpopulism. This article examines this resurgence by comparing right-wing nationalpopulism and left-wing nationalpopulism. In order to do so, it focuses on four European countries: France, Italy, Greece and Spain. While there are both policy and discursive similarities between these two forms of nationalpopulism, this article argues that they are fundamentally different and belong to antagonistic ideological factions. PubDate: Sat, 18 Jul 2020 04:51:59 PDT
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