The Cultural Politics of Anti-Elitism

This book examines the highly ambivalent implications and effects of anti-elitism. It draws on this theme as a cross cutting entry point to provide transdisciplinary analysis of current conjunctures and their contradictions, drawing on examples from popular culture and media, politics, fashion, labour, and spatial arrangements. Using the toolboxes of media and discourse analysis, hegemony theory, ethnography, critical social psychology and cultural studies more broadly, the book surveys and theorizes the forms, the implications and the ambiguities and limits of anti-elitist formations in different parts of the world. Anti-elitist sentiments colour the contemporary political conjuncture as much as they shape pop cultural and media trends. Populists, right-wing authoritarian ones and others, direct their anger at cultural, political and, sometimes, economic elites while supporting other elites and creating new ones. At the same time, "elitist" knowledge and expertise, decision-making power and taste regimes are being questioned in societal transformations that are discussed much more positively under headlines such as participation or democratization. Focusing on themes such as labour struggles and anti-oligarchy rhetoric in Russia, tax-avoiding elites and fiscal imaginaries, working class agency, nationalist political discourse in India, Austria, the UK, and Hungary, Melania Trump as a celebrity narrative in Slovenia, aesthetic codes of the alt-right, football hooliganism in Germany, "hipster hate" in German political discourse or the politics of expertise and anti-elite iconography in high fashion internationally. The book brings together a group of international, interdisciplinary case studies in order to better understand the ways in which the battle cry "against the elites" shapes current conjunctures and possible future politics. It is intended for undergraduates, postgraduates and postdoctoral research. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Acknowledgements List of contributors Introduction: The cultural politics of anti-elitism between populism, pop culture and everyday life- an introduction Chapter 1: The cultural politics of anti-elitism between populism, pop culture and everyday life: An introduction Anti-elitism and its moment A break-up of hegemony in politics – and in culture? Anti-elitism, anti-elite articulations and cultural politics Anti-elite articulations in culture Observers of anti-elitism observed Conjunctural diagnoses and anti-elitism as an entry point Post-2016: a new conjuncture? Notes Bibliography Filmography Part I: An anti-elite moment Chapter 2: Anti-elitism, populism and the question of the conjuncture Articulation and the challenge of thinking conjuncturally Thinking heterogeneity Locating the conjuncture Which elite is this? The paradoxical populism of Brexit Animating a people; assembling a bloc Putting anti-elitism to work Bibliography Chapter 3: The betrayal of the elites: Populism and anti-elitism Introduction The people vs. the elite The dictatorship of the intelligentsia The greed of the super-rich The corruption of the political caste What use does anti-elitism have? Note Bibliography Chapter 4: The transclasse and the common people : Autosociobiographies and the anti-elitist imaginary Introduction: elite as a relational concept Good behaviour: an experimental arrangement The shifting of the symbolic markings Background and “complexion”: the hour of autosociobiography Hillbilly elitism: top and bottom between rupture and narrative reconciliation Underclass as a family story: the “Elegy” on Netflix Conclusion: the figure of the transclasse and the referencing of the “people” Notes Bibliography Part II: Politics, economy, inequality Chapter 5: What are we going to do about the rich?: Anti-elitism, neo-liberal common sense and the politics of taxation Introduction Neo-liberalism and common sense about taxation Constructing elites as tax avoiders Political activations What kind of elite? What kind of people? What kind of demand? What are we going to do about the rich? Notes Bibliography Chapter 6: Criticism of elites and subjective social agency: A look at the workers Subalternity and elite critique Subjective societal agency Restrictive elite critique: there’s nothing you can do about “those up there” anyway Progressive-interventionist elite critique: the worker creates the values! Brutalisation and retreat into the private sphere: economic constraints as the Achilles’ heel of progressively expanded capacity for action Notes Bibliography Chapter 7: “Social rage” against the oligarchs: Justice, Jews and dreams of unity in current Russia Against the elites Protests in Russia in the constellations of vlast, narod and the intelligentsia The Kemerovo tragedy and social protest Social protest in the context of populism and anti-populism Anti-Semitism and slave rhetoric “We have to unite” Conclusion Notes Bibliography Sources Part III: Spatial and temporal differentiations Chapter 8: Countryside versus city?: Anti-urban populism, Heimat discourse and rurban assemblages in Austria Countryside versus city in Austrian politics The Heimat concept in Austria Relativising the city-countryside dichotomy: on the necessity of a differentiated social analysis of everyday life Notes Bibliography Chapter 9: Invoking urgency: Emotional politics and two kinds of anti-elitism Introduction Defining urgency Urgency and valued good Urgency and temporality Urgency and emergency Urgency and the valued good: climate change truths and their consequences Urgency and the temporality of the in-between Urgency and the in-between The Emergency Decree: juxtaposing urgency and the state of exception Conclusion: two types of anti-elitism Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Chapter 10: The elite as the political adversary: Neo-liberalism and the cultural politics of Hindutva Introduction The rise of the BJP and shifting anti-elite rhetoric Building hegemony The making of anti-elite populism in India The subaltern Modi as a hegemon Reigniting the Harvard vs. hard work debate Conclusion Notes Bibliography Part IV: Anti-elitism and the (new) right Chapter 11: The heroic deed, the wrong word and the utopia of clarity: The discourse of Germany’s New Right on elites and its links to popular culture Introduction Popular culture observes elites The right observes elites Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 12: “Unpolitical in this time/truly one can no longer be so”: The raw anti-elitism of hooligans in Germany Introduction: hooliganism – an “apolitical” subculture? Hooligans as political actors – questions and methods Extreme right-wing criticism of the elite by the hooligans Fight against the “establishment” The politics of hooliganism: historical and current developments Hooligans as a “dangerous crowd” Stubborn fan cultures: the game in the stands and the fight for the terraces HogeSa and the aftermath: Hools as protectors of public order Vigilante groups and “mixed scenes” A “raw bourgeoisie” of hooligans? Hooligans as ventriloquists of public anger Conclusion and outlook Notes Bibliography Chapter 13: Nazi-Barbies : Performing ultra-femininity against the “Feminist Elite” in the Alt-Right movement Introduction: what is ultra-femininity? Enhanced women: from “rightwing women all dress the same” to “Fake Melania” Beautification and class shaming Beautification from feminist and post-feminist perspectives Pop culture and the Alt-Right Conclusion: ultra-femininity and (white) power Notes Bibliography Part V: Pop culture and its politics Chapter 14: Celebrity and the displacement of class: The folkloristic ordinariness of Melania Trump Introduction Celebrity, media and the moral economy of class in post-socialism She was an ordinary, simple girl: the extraordinary ordinariness of M. Trump and the practice of levelling “Nationing” the ordinary: nation-as-family metaphor and a creation of a folkloristic periphery The meritocratic trope and M. Trump’s regressive post-feminist femininity Easternism in action Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 15: Who says who’s cool, and how much is it worth?: The convergence of elite luxury fashion with streetwear styles Blurring social standing with clothing “The very best in luxury along with the very best sneakers” – the democratisation of fashion? From Dapper Dan to Supreme – imitation, scarcity and the question of ownership “You’ll be cool when we say you’re cool” – streetwear culture and its elites Inconspicuous consumption Notes Bibliography Chapter 16: Against hipsters, left and right: A figure of cultural elitism and social anxiety “The workers, not the hipsters”: mainstream anti-hipster populism in Germany (2016) One more time: “What was the hipster” Anti-elitist hipster critique in pop culture since the 1950s: a typology Square critique Subcultural (immanent) critique Anti-consumerist critique (Left) political critique Cultural figures: What kind of thing is a hipster, theoretically speaking? Hipster hate as self-defence? An ethnographic snapshot from the US, 2009 Berlin 2012/14: Hipster Hass Conclusion Notes Bibliography Music video Songs Chapter 17: The ghost of Europe is shifting shape: How the film Folkbildningsterror intervenes in left debates around class vs. identity politics Articulated struggles: how the film Folkbildningsterror redefines notions of class war The post-irony of it all The sexual politics of capitalism: Or how we all learned to only love what we can get Do not divide: unite and multiply! Conclusion Notes Bibliography Filmography Index This book examines the highly ambivalent implications and effects of anti-elitism. It draws on this theme as a cross-cutting entry point to provide transdisciplinary analysis of current conjunctures and their contradictions, drawing on examples from popular culture and media, politics, fashion, labour and spatial arrangements. Using the toolboxes of media and discourse analysis, hegemony theory, ethnography, critical social psychology and cultural studies more broadly, the book surveys and theorizes the forms, the implications and the ambiguities and limits of anti-elitist formations in different parts of the world. Anti-elitist sentiments colour the contemporary political conjuncture as much as they shape pop cultural and media trends. Populists, right-wing authoritarian ones and others, direct their anger at cultural, political and, sometimes, economic elites while supporting other elites and creating new ones. At the same time, "elitist" knowledge and expertise, decision-making power and taste regimes are being questioned in societal transformations that are discussed much more positively under headlines such as participation or democratization. The book brings together a group of international, interdisciplinary case studies in order to better understand the ways in which the battle cry "against the elites" shapes current conjunctures and possible future politics, focusing on themes such as nationalist political discourse in India, Austria, the UK and Hungary, labour struggles and anti-oligarchy rhetoric in Russia, tax-avoiding elites and fiscal imaginaries, working-class agency, Melania Trump as a celebrity narrative in Slovenia, aesthetic codes of the Alt-Right, football hooliganism in Germany, "hipster hate" in German political discourse or the politics of expertise and anti-elite iconography in high fashion internationally. The book is intended for undergraduates, postgraduates and postdoctoral researchers. The Open Access version of this book, available at (http://www.taylorfrancis.com) www.taylorfrancis.com , has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license