The Politics of Feeling

How today's dominant political forms—right-wing populism, progressivism, and liberalism—offer differentiated affective responses to shared conditions of uncertainty. The Politics of Feeling argues that politics has become a matter of political feelings in an age of uncertainty. The uncertainties of the post-2008 period have transformed the political arena and made the question of how people feel central to the formation of political affiliations and divisions. The book identifies three competing political forms in the US and the UK today: right-wing populism, progressivism, and contemporary liberalism. It argues that rather than naming coherent programs of political thought, these popular political forms are operating as arrangements of attachment and political intensity. To understand how the three political forms organise feelings and contribute to the turbulence and strangeness of politics today, the book offers a set of surprising and disruptive propositions, including ‘Populism offers affirmation and promises recognition’, ‘For progressivism, everything matters now’, and ‘Liberalism promises that nothing ever need change’.

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