Twice a month, The duty challenges enthusiasts of philosophy and the history of ideas to decipher a topical issue based on the theses of a prominent thinker.
populism seems to be one of the political phenomena of the hour. Described as a resurgence of tendencies already present in our democratic regimes, but stimulated by a specific conjuncture of lively social tensions, which it helps to fuel, populism apparently presents this direct address to the “people” which points to violence and calls for radicalism. As it presents itself at the moment, it is often associated with conservatism, even with the “reactionary” character of certain right-wing ideologies. But as the American sociologist Jeffrey C. Alexander posits, populism can be right-wing or left-wing, its main characteristic being that it is fundamentally “anti-civilian”, that is to create radical symbolic divisions within the political community, threatening to destroy it.
If it is the “Trumpism” present in the United States that seems to best embody this political movement today, it is because it is its most visible face, if not its most caricatural. Indeed, resulting from a reaction against the “elites” of power, this face of conservative populism is based on a character who nevertheless paradoxically incarnates the image of the billionaire economic elite. It is that he straddles the economic comforts to which the average voter aspires, while being seen as the victim of new social aspirations which threaten to upset the privileges associated with “whites”. For the ideologue Steve Bannon, writes Alexander, this constitutes a warrior rallying cry, launched in the apocalyptic tone of the only possible way out to preserve the values of civilization.
Meanwhile, in left populism, it is the very features of this civilization that are caricatured and reduced to having never embodied anything but a gigantic deception, from which we must extricate ourselves by counting on a fight against oppression. all-round.
On either side of this cultural war, no mediation of extreme positions seems possible, which translates into an erosion of the civil sphere in which such positions can coexist.
The civil sphere
Alexander offers a sociological analysis based on the civil sphere, a concept he has developed over the past thirty years as being at the heart of the democratic life of our societies.
This civil sphere, which has autonomy in relation to other spheres of social life (the state, the market, the various institutions, such as education or the family, etc.), is the one that ensures broader social solidarity. The civil sphere makes the demands arising from general political life coincide with the cultural traditions that have ensured its existence and continuity. It is a symbolic space for mediation, both for social conflicts and the transformations that affect long-term political life. Nourished by the requirements of representation, this civil sphere is framed by the media and the functional apparatuses for regulating political power (such as elections).
His role as arbiter accommodates both the representation of power and the power of representation, which is associated with contestation. Social movements are received and perceived by their possible contribution to political reforms, such as these can take place in institutions open to claims of inclusion, social justice, solidarity and democracy. Thus, within the civil sphere, symbolic expressions linked to what society holds to be “sacred”, namely its fundamental values, and what links them to the “profane”, i.e. to daily activities of all kinds, intersect. Moments of social crisis then bring out this tension between “sacred” and “profane”, and reveal possibilities for transforming the codes that govern political life, while maintaining this mediation at the heart of it.
It is when this tension threatens to break, in favor of a populist claim that calls it into question in the name of its own unilateral existence, that democratic existence is threatened at its very foundation. Populism then presents itself as a radical solution which, alone, can ensure a renewal of the social pact, just as unilaterally defined.
Right and left populisms
Speaking in the name of the “people” by attacking the central institutions of political power (in its judicial, legislative or executive branches) remains the privilege of populisms, whether right or left.
On the right, populism claims “individual freedom”, which would be directly usurped by the political power of certain elites; on the left, populism calls for “liberation”, which would be impossible without the lifting of all forms of oppression ensured by the political power benefiting only certain elites. In both cases, it is the rejection of the institutions in place, accused of deceiving the people, which motivates the radical calls to challenge them violently, if not simply to overthrow them. In both cases, the social mediation ensured by these institutions is abolished, leaving the acts thus “liberated” to be played directly against each other, often with threats or violence.
Politics, thus returned to its Hobbesian definition of “struggle of all against all”, loses all ability to play its role of mediation. The media, and even education, are suspected of not adhering to this message of radicalization. The civil sphere is falling apart in a context of exclusion, individualism, injustice and nepotism. What is the role of sociology in this context?
cultural sociology
Alexander developed the idea of a cultural sociology. All his thinking revolves around the importance of the symbolic and symbolic mediations structuring social life. Sociological analysis therefore strives to show how these symbolic mediations act at the heart of life in society. It thus requires a hermeneutic approach capable of correctly interpreting the meaning and significance of practices, while helping to recognize their symbolic value in the organization of social life. It thus insists on the kinship that our societies have with all other human societies, depending of course on the specificities that are specific to each.
In the case of our mass democracies, it is political exercise in its universal popular extension that has this privileged symbolic character. This character stands out particularly in a certain theatricality of social life, where actors and spectators merge, due to the ambivalence specific to democratic representation. Political performances thus become the insignia par excellence of democratic life when they match their expressions with the codes of values maintained by the civil sphere. We also understand by this that the performances of populism clash with these codes, and even want to break with them—and this is often what makes them precisely shocking.
It is through symbolic violence, in its provocative words and gestures, that populism intends to take advantage of the institutions in place. The ability to channel any kind of frustrations then passes in this way into such provocative manifestations. These have the ability to bypass more complex explanations of situations, making populist expression apt to simply refute these seemingly unnecessary complexities. In the apparent simplicity and obviousness of populism, right or left, any nuance must be erased in favor of direct action to be exercised in the urgency of immediate solutions, just as simplistic and illusory, but nevertheless possessing a expressive efficiency that makes them seductive. Populism everywhere displays a shoddy aesthetic that sends back to the “people” an entirely uninhibited and uninhibited image of reality.
According to Alexander, cultural sociology must therefore take note of this and contribute through its own interpretative action to ensure the maintenance of the symbolic mediations it studies. Its own relationship to the civil sphere is first of all to give it the status of a concept, and thereby to contribute to enhancing it as the center and guarantee of the organization of legitimate political power in our societies. This requires reflection capable of showing the ins and outs of the symbolic mediations that structure our social action, while maintaining a historical vision that extends the tradition of classical political thought, updated in its mass democratic context.
This is in itself a challenge, which goes above all through an educational path, an education in the way we look at today’s world. The critique of populism is therefore, so to speak, inherent in cultural sociology as understood by Alexander. And the means it takes to oppose it are in total contradiction with any form of populism, left or right.