Introduction: Antipolitics — Closing and Colonizing the Public Sphere

Abstract

We live in antipolitical times. Many symptoms point in this direction: the reemergence of right-wing populism in western Europe, the antistate rhetoric of the new Republican Right in the United States, the recurrent success of antipolitical establishment candidates in Latin America, the ethnic recoding of politics in the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, the widespread evidence of popular disenchantment with politics in old as well as new democracies, the tangible presence of antipolitical motives in media discourse, and the emigration of sovereignty out of politics and into societal systems of global scale. This multitude of dispersed indicators naturally falls together into a colourful mosaic of generalized antipolitics. ‘We live in antipolitical times’. Indeed this phrase is marvellous — the ideal opening of any book on antipolitics. It formulates a bold hypothesis, proclaims a new era, irradiates the air of grand theory and suggests an extraordinary capacity on the part of the author to capture the signs of our time. Let us therefore read it cautiously, with reservation. Or better, let us reformulate it.