Der märchenhafte Populismus, oder: Die Politik der Gattung

Abstract

This article attempts to understand the discursive dimension of contemporary populism by undertaking a re-reading of classical (cultural anthropological) genre theory. Thereby, the concept of the collective genre (“Kollektivgattung”) will be developed. This concept refers to a genre that is characterized by the fact that it addresses empirical collectives on the one hand, and on the other hand, imaginaries of social collectiveness – imaginaries that promise to erase difference and create wholeness. To make this point clear, I offer a parallel reading of two improbably distant textual and narrative forms: fairy tales and populist invective, which certainly have little in common except, I argue, that they follow rules of collective genres.