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Popularism, pluralism, and the ordinary

Abstract: Leading contemporary theorists of populism have converged on the view that populist movements are necessarily antipluralist. But antipluralist movements are poor vehicles for achieving social justice, which should not make equal status contingent on homogeneity. This paper contests the emerging consensus that populism is necessarily antipluralist, arguing that it is better understood through an analysis of “the ordinary.” Using Stanley Cavell’s suggestive analysis of “the uncanniness of the ordinary,” I argue that populist politics faces a paradox: truly ordinary things don’t emphasize their own ordinariness – they just are ordinary – so populism tends to frame itself as a perpetual, never-fully-achieved reassertion of the ordinary. It’s no coincidence, then, that both defenders and critics of the status quo often figure populism as a “return of the repressed” –precisely what Freud defines as the uncanny. Populist antipluralism is best understood as one method for managing this uncanniness, but other strategies are available, illuminating the potential for a more inclusive populism.