Populism, Populism Research, and Their Discontents

Populism—both as a social/political phenomenon and as a label, slogan, and symbolic designation/invocation attributed to particular patterns of political activity—seems to have dominated public debates (political, mediatic, and academic) within the past few decades. This has generated plenty of material and facilitated significant advances in the field of populism research. This paper starts by registering some of these advances in terms of conceptual refinement and typology development, mainly focusing on the impact of discursive approaches. Yet such advances have not been sufficient to dispel long-held stereotypes or to resolve emerging tensions, inconsistencies, and discrepancies. After first registering some notable examples of such inconsistencies, we then attempt to reformulate the study of populism through a rigorous exchange with psychoanalytic concepts and insights. The development of a consistent psychosocial strand within populism research has the potential to illuminate the issues at stake in a more nuanced manner, highlighting new angles and facilitating the development of new interpretive frameworks. It also calls for new challenging transdisciplinary choreographies, in which anthropology could potentially play an important role.