Ulf Hedetoft

“Paradoxes of Populism” argues that populism, far-from-random similarities with ordinary manifestations of nationalism, should be approached not as a venture into the classical structures of nation-states and identities, but as a disruptive and destabilizing consequence of some of the constituent elements of sovereign nation-states becoming eroded and prised apart by contextual global processes and their agents. The book demonstrates that populism, in its many varieties, is riddled with even more paradoxes and inconsistencies than mainstream nationalism itself––confusing causes and appearances, realities and fantasies and turning the world inside out. This book definitively engages with real-world challenges that the age of populism, the Second Coming of Nationalism, poses in liberal democracies states as well as their political and cultural interpretations in the populist fantasia.

Troubles of the West and Nationalism's Second Coming

Paradoxes of Populism

Populism may come across as little more than an extreme form of national belonging––nationalism run wild so to speak––a case for national psychologists or a kind of collective pathology. However, as so often, appearances are deceptive. “Paradoxes of Populism” argues that the far-from-random similarities with ordinary manifestations of nationalism should be approached not as a venture into the classical structures of nation-states and identities, but as a disruptive and destabilizing consequence of some of the constituent elements of sovereign nation-states becoming eroded and prised apart by contextual global processes and their agents. Hence, populism in all its varieties––and there are many, as the book demonstrates––is riddled with even more paradoxes and inconsistencies than mainstream nationalism itself––confusing causes and appearances, realities and fantasies, and turning the world inside out. The age of populism is truly the Second Coming of nationalism, and it has come with a vengeance. Its advent, however, happens in the background of real problems for millions of ordinary people in liberal-democratic states. This book sets out to engage with these real-world challenges as well as their political and cultural interpretations in the populist fantasia.

This book addresses the topic of European unity and/or fragmentation from the vantage point of cultural and symbolic tension and thus the often ambiguous and unresolved figurations of the symbolic politics employed by proponents of integration in depth and the political symbolics of nation-states and national identities.

European Identities in Transformation

Political Symbols, Symbolic Politics

Mette Hjort

What happens to a sense of belonging when national and regional governments, religious organizations, community groups, political parties, and corporations become unstable and incoherent, as they have in these nationalist and postnationalist times? From a richly interdisciplinary perspective, the authors examine notions of citizenship and cultural hybridization, migration and other forms of mobility, displacements and ethnic cleansing, and the nature of national belonging in a world turning ever more fluid, aided by transnational flows of capital, information, people, and ideas.

Belonging and Identity

The Postnational Self

Focally situated within the perspective of cultural analysis and semiotics, this text draws on this variety of background in an attempt to uncover a conceptual whole that may shed light on nationalism.

Ulf Hedetoft

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