Reaction Formations: The Subject of Ethnonationalism (Berkeley Forum in the Humanities) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1531503144 ISBN 13: 9781531503147

Publisher: Fordham University Press, 2023

Synopsis

Today, an international new right has coalesced. Variously described as nativist, right-populist, alt-right, and neofascist, far-right movements in many countries have achieved electoral victories that not long ago seemed highly improbable. They have also developed a new cultural politics. Adapting tactics from the left, the new right has moved from decorum to transgression; from conservative propriety to the frank sexualization of political figures and positions; from appealing to the conscious normalcy of the “silent majority” to recasting itself as a protest movement of and for the aggrieved. These movements share a mandate for robust nationalism, yet they also cultivate a striking international solidarity. Who is the subject of this ethnonationalism?
Many new right movements have in fact intensified or laid bare long-standing tendencies, but this volume seeks to address aspects of their cultural politics that raise new and urgent questions. How should we assess the new right’s disconcerting appropriations of strategies of minoritarian resistance? How can we practice critique in the face of adversaries who claim to practice a critique of their own? How do apparently post-normative versions of nationalism give rise to heightened forms of militarism, incarceration, censorship, and inequality? How should we understand the temporality of ethnonationalism, which combines a romance with archaic tradition, an ethos of disruption driven by tech futurism frequently tinged with accelerationist pathos, and a kitschy nostalgia for a hazily defined recent past, when things were “greater” than they are now?
Surveying nationalisms from Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Israel-Palestine, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Reaction Formations gives a critical account of contemporary ethnonationalist cultural politics, while drawing out counterstrategies for anti-fascist resistance.
Contributors: Tyler Blakeney, Chiara Bottici, Joshua Branciforte, Gisela Catanzaro, Melinda Cooper, Julian Göpffarth, Ramsey McGlazer, Benjamin Noys, Bruno Perreau, Rahul Rao, Shaul Setter, and M. Ty

About this title

About the Authors

Joshua Branciforte is an independent scholar. He co-edited the “Queer Bonds” special issue of GLQ (17:2-3), and his work has also appeared in Modern Language Quarterly. A companion piece to his chapter in this volume appears in the Winter 2022 issue of GLQ.

Ramsey McGlazer is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also affiliated with the Program in Critical Theory, the Department of Italian Studies, and the Center for Latin American Studies. He is the author of Old Schools: Modernism, Education, and the Critique of Progress (2020), published by Fordham University Press in the Lit Z Series.

Chiara Bottici is a philosopher and critical theorist. She is Director of Gender Studies and Associate Professor of Philosophy at The New School, and she is the author of Imaginal Politics: Images beyond Imagination and the Imaginary (Columbia University Press 2014), A Philosophy of Political Myth (Cambridge University Press 2007), Anarchafeminism (Bloomsbury 2021), and A Feminist Mythology (Bloomsbury 2021).With sociologist Benoit Challand, she also co-authored Imagining Europe: Myth, Memory, Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations (Routledge, 2010). She also co-edited the collections of essays The Politics of Imagination (Routledge, 2011), The Anarchist Turn (Pluto 2013), and Feminism, Capitalism and Critique (Palgrave 2017). Her work has been translated into ten foreign languages and impacted the fields of philosophy, sociology, political science, and aesthetics.

Gisela Catanzaro is a sociologist. She is a Professor in the Departments of Political Science and Sociology at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and an independent researcher affiliated with the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas and the Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani. She currently directs the research project “Transformations in Contemporary Neoliberal Ideology: Ethico-Political and Critical Shifts in the Present, the Frankfurt School, and Poststructuralism” at the Secretaría de Ciencia y Técnica at the Universidad de Buenos Aires.

Melinda Cooper is Professor in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. She is the author of Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism (Zone Books, 2017) and is currently completing a manuscript On Capital Gains: The Counterrevolution in Public Finance.

From the Back Cover

“Reaction Formations offers an excellent interdisciplinary study of contemporary forms of ethnonationalism. The book’s analysis is timely and brilliantly conducted.” ―Ewa Majewska, author of Feminist Antifascism
“An important, timely, and refreshingly interdisciplinary book.” ―Zahid R. Chaudhary, Princeton University
Today, an international new right has coalesced. Variously described as nativist, right-populist, alt-right, and neofascist, far-right movements in many countries have achieved electoral victories that not long ago seemed highly improbable. They have also developed a new cultural politics. Adapting tactics from the left, the new right has moved from decorum to transgression; from conservative propriety to the frank sexualization of political figures and positions; from appealing to the conscious normalcy of the “silent majority” to recasting itself as a protest movement of and for the aggrieved. These movements share a mandate for robust nationalism, yet they also cultivate a striking international solidarity. Who is the subject of this ethnonationalism?
Many new right movements have in fact intensified or laid bare long-standing tendencies, but this volume seeks to address aspects of their cultural politics that raise new and urgent questions. How should we assess the new right’s disconcerting appropriations of strategies of minoritarian resistance? How can we practice critique in the face of adversaries who claim to practice a critique of their own? How do apparently post-normative versions of nationalism give rise to heightened forms of militarism, incarceration, censorship, and inequality? How should we understand the temporality of ethnonationalism, which combines a romance with archaic tradition, an ethos of disruption driven by tech futurism frequently tinged with accelerationist pathos, and a kitschy nostalgia for a hazily defined recent past, when things were “greater” than they are now?
Surveying nationalisms from Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Israel-Palestine, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Reaction Formations gives a critical account of contemporary ethnonationalist cultural politics, while drawing out counterstrategies for anti-fascist resistance.
Joshua Branciforte is an independent scholar working on queer theory and the new right.
Ramsey McGlazer is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of Old Schools: Modernism, Education, and the Critique of Progress.
Contributors: Tyler Blakeney, Chiara Bottici, Joshua Branciforte, Gisela Catanzaro, Melinda Cooper, Julian Göpffarth, Ramsey McGlazer, Benjamin Noys, Bruno Perreau, Rahul Rao, Shaul Setter, and M. Ty

Edition details

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication date: 2023
• ISBN 10: 1531503144
• ISBN 13: 9781531503147
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368
• Editor: Branciforte Joshua, McGlazer Ramsey