Anniversary Workshop: Albrecht Koschorke: “We are the people and I am speaking on behalf of you”: Populist Narratives and Democratic Representation

How do populist leaders connect with their supporters? Which stories bridge the distance between the life-worlds of self-appointed leaders and their constituents? How do these stories facilitate a connection? What forms of identification do they establish between both sides? How do they reinforce one another and how can this mutual reinforcement be inter­rupted? What is made explicit and what is left to tacit understanding? Why does ‘fact-checking’ provide such an ineffective counterweight to populist lies?

This workshop examines these questions by focusing on material related to current democratic decision-making processes and their narrative dramatization on the occasion of recent elections. Narratives, however, are only one of several components in play. We will also have to address communicative structures more broadly, including the emerg­ence of media-based personalized and group-specific realities. Moreover, we will need to grapple in more general terms with new antagonistic models of democratic representation, which appear to be gaining in cultural impact and traction.

Material (research, newspaper articles, TV clips etc.) will be provided in early January to the workshop participants.