People and populism: constructions, discourses and critique

Populism and populist politics are everywhere. However, it is far for being entirely clear what populism is and what this category ought to include. Prominent philosophical paradigms conceive populism as an ideology, as a discursive frame, as a strategy of mobilization, as a special configuration of political power inside and (maybe) outside liberal democracies. By combining sources from history of political thought and ideology critique with the most recent developments in the field, this seminar looks at how the people has been constituted, re-constituted, constructed and de-constructed in modern and contemporary times.