Cultural Populism

This chapter examines how cultural and artistic works can introduce creative and political challenges to populist governments and movements. Populism describes a very distinct form of doing politics. It generally positions itself as outside of ‘normal politics’, and it elevates the image and idea of ‘the people’. In doing so, it also relies upon, and reproduces, strong ideas about ‘us and them’. Through a reading of a selected work by artist Jeremy Deller, performed in the aftermath of the ‘Brexit’ vote in 2016, as well as a film produced by young, minority ethnic women in Swansea, Cymru/Wales, to the heightened populist atmospheres of those times, we discuss and show how these artistic works challenged ideas about ‘us and them’. Through these examples, we examine the problems with narrow and homogenous accounts of ‘the people’, whilst also exploring the possibilities for ‘the people’ to redraw the contours of the political, and imagine the future anew.