The Schmitt-Podemos connection

Booth, Josh; Baert, Patrick

doi:10.4324/9781351212557-1

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Largely, though, this term is absent from self-description, most likely because of its predominantly pejorative connotations. In Spain overall, the political party Podemos , created after the so-called indignados movement of 2011, referred positively to populism, envisaging a kind of left-wing version of it (see Booth and Baert, 2018), but also appears to be withdrawing from its use. Given the very limited self-use by the actors involved, this article will not employ this concept either (for a discussion of ‘democratic populism’ in Catalonia, see Gamper Sachse, 2018, in this issue).…”

Section: A Note On Terminology and Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a conceptual history of the present: Democracy, rights, and freedom in the recent Catalan conflict

Wagner

2018

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Reinhart Koselleck showed that the decades around 1800 witnessed a major transformation of political language. Around 1800, the horizon of expectations gained distance from the space of the experiences that human beings were making, and thus possibilities for the future opened up widely. In particular, the future would be the time during which ‘peoples’ would gain their capacity for self-determination, called popular sovereignty. This would occur in two particular versions that crystallized in the course of the 19th century, namely as ‘nations’ that would unify or liberate themselves from monarchical and/or imperial domination to form the polities proper to them, or as a ‘class’ that embodied the universal interest of humankind and would assert itself in a second revolution, following up on the French Revolution. Political concepts acquired during that period the meaning that they still had in the late 20th century, i.e. the time when Koselleck developed his approach to the history of concepts, but they may be challenged in the present time, and with them the entire self-understanding of modern polities. The recent Catalan conflict serves to better understand this challenge. ‘People’ and ‘nation’ are there used in ways that are reminiscent of this politico-conceptual tradition, but in a highly ambiguous way. On the one hand, they are employed in exactly their historical meaning: the Catalan people and nation are seen to be finally fulfilling their historical role of reaching political self-determination. On the other hand, these concepts are re-deployed to place them in the current context of existing democratic commitments and institutions as well as high interdependence between polities, all the while claiming that Catalan independence opens up a new normative horizon of democracy, rights, and freedom. This article will try to show that this undeclared ambiguity is characteristic of our current situation in general. This is a situation in which the historically created political concepts have sedimented in institutions, and thus appear to have ‘consolidated’ and moved beyond their historicity. At the same time, they remain impregnated with particular historical experiences that can be re-interpreted to be mobilized in political struggles of the present. To assess the validity and acceptability of any such re-interpretation requires explicit reflection about the persistence of historicity in political concepts.

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Section: A Note On Terminology and Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a conceptual history of the present: Democracy, rights, and freedom in the recent Catalan conflict

Wagner

2018

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“…To gain a proper understanding of Colau and BComú’s distinctive translation centred on horizontality and commoning, it is instructive to draw a short parallel with Pablo Iglesias and Podemos initially focused on vertical power and antagonism ( Eklundh, 2019; García Agustín and Briziarelli, 2018; Iglesias, 2015a, 2015b; Sola and Rendueles 2018). 5 Iglesias explicitly drew on Laclau’s leader-centric and agonistic model of populism (Arditi, 2010; Laclau, 2005), in addition to elements from an eclectic realist political tradition from Machiavelli to Carl Schmitt and Mao (Booth and Baert, 2018; Iglesias, 2013, 2014, 2015b). 6 According to Iglesias’ perspective, novel collective forces emerge by embracing and heightening antagonistic conflicts with hegemonic power, elite, establishment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New municipalism and feminist leadership after the Indignados: The political aesthetics of truth in Ada Colau for Mayor (Faus 2016)

Ungureanu

2024

European Journal of Women's Studies

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In this article, I reflect on the intersection between feminism and documentary art as truth-telling by focusing on Alcaldessa ( Ada Colau for Mayor), the most relevant documentary of the long-term collaboration between the film-maker Pau Faus and Ada Colau, the first female mayor of Barcelona (2015–2023). My argument is critical of a reductionist interpretation which portrays Alcaldessa as a personalist postfeminist documentary overly fixated on ‘biography rather than policy’. In contrast, I posit that Faus’ documentary, delving into Colau’s initial electoral campaign (2014–2015), offers valuable insights into pivotal aspects of an underexamined political vision that merges the principles of new municipalism with a focus on the ‘common people’ ( gent comú) and feminism. Furthermore, the documentary sheds light on unreconciled dilemmas inherent in the lived new politics and feminist leadership, issues that often remain concealed within the ideological trappings of political manifestos and programmes.

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“… 2. This radical-transformative quality of Schmitt's concept of the political makes it also attractive for leftist versions of populist politics (Mouffe, 2018). Populism from the left is similarly not immune to the authoritarian underpinning of Schmitt's constitutional thinking (see for instance, Booth and Baert, 2018). …”

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confidence: 99%

The ‘Will of the People’: The Populist Challenge to Democracy in the Name of Popular Sovereignty

Schmidtke

2023

Social & Legal Studies

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This article analyses how right-wing populist actors claim to represent the “voice of the people” and express “popular sovereignty” as a mode of challenging the traditional constitutional foundation of liberal democracy. This hypothesis is illustrated by an investigation into the political discourse of the Alternative for Germany considering how this populist actor has developed a political strategy claiming to speak for the “people” in an authentic and immediate fashion. The analysis of this actor's political mobilization shows how the championed direct democratic representation is couched in a sovereigntist discourse that relies on divisive identity markers rather than genuine democratic participation. Drawing on Carl Schmitt's concept of the political, the article interprets right-wing populism as invoking a permanent “state of exception” that employs an emotionally charged friend– enemy distinction whose logic of representing the people has the potential of triggering radical political change as well as undermining the integrity of rule-based democracy.

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The Schmitt-Podemos connection

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Towards a conceptual history of the present: Democracy, rights, and freedom in the recent Catalan conflict

Towards a conceptual history of the present: Democracy, rights, and freedom in the recent Catalan conflict

New municipalism and feminist leadership after the Indignados: The political aesthetics of truth in Ada Colau for Mayor (Faus 2016)

The ‘Will of the People’: The Populist Challenge to Democracy in the Name of Popular Sovereignty

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