Imagine …
What comes into view when we look beyond right populism?
The Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci described politics as a “war of position”: a struggle over which ideas about society come to appear self-evident and shape public debate. Responding with even louder slogans is not enough. It is equally important not to surrender the discursive space to right populists and to make visible a distinct, positive understanding of democratic coexistence.
In his guest commentary for the German daily newspaper taz, Olaf Zenker therefore shifts the perspective. Rather than beginning with right populism, the text starts from a society in which very different people live together. It directs attention to difference and disagreement, rights and institutions, social inequality and compromise – but also to care, everyday engagement, and the many ways in which people can change social conditions together in solidarity.
The commentary neither idealizes liberal democracy nor presents it as a finished achievement. Instead, it asks what emotions democratic coexistence can generate and what social forces are already at work within it. This also points to a task for public anthropologies: not only to study authoritarian developments, but also to make pluralistic societies visible in all their contradictions and to contribute to how they understand themselves in public.
The guest commentary was published in taz and is freely available here:
