POLEMICIZING POPULISM

Scholarship has a formula which obligates each author to insist on some original contribution vis-à-vis other works that have been written, and such claims are often forced or unconvincing. Benjamin Arditi’s Is there such a thing as populism?: 3 provocations and 5½ proposals is a fresh and complex work that makes for a quick read, provokes a range of reactions, and then demands several more close reads. Its main goal is to challenge scholars who have taken to discussing politics with the same casual lack of thought with which they may look at their phone: there is no message, no call, no need to check the time, unreflective gazing out of habit, with no reflection. Arditi suggests that the term populism, long absent from political discussion in developed democracies, has emerged with little serious reflection and, worse, scholars are complicit with such lack of critical reflection.