The Aesthetics of Populism: Political Struggle and the Aesthetics Experience in Poland after 1989

Series: 

Do populists and liberal democrats recognizably differ in their lifestyles, clothes, eating habits, or reading preferences? Do the supporters of populism and liberal democracy look at the past from different perspectives? How do their aesthetic choices influence their political engagement? You will find these and similar questions addressed (and answered) by the contributors to this collection. The volume owes its special place in the literature on political aesthetics to its interdisciplinarity. It combines theoretical explorations of the ways aesthetics can be used to analyze political developments and empirical research that comprehensively illuminates the relevance of aesthetics to political struggle.

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Leszek Koczanowicz is Professor of Cultural Studies and Political Science at the Department of Cultural Studies at the SWPS University (Poland). He specializes in theory of culture, social theory, and cultural aspects of politics. His previous appointments include inter alia the University of Wroclaw, SUNY/Buffalo, Columbia University, and SUNY/Geneseo Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. He is the author and editor of twelve books and numerous articles in Polish and English, including Politics of Time: Dynamics of Identity in Post-Communist Poland (Berghahn Books, 2008), Politics of Dialogue: Non-Consensual Democracy and Critical Community (Edinburgh University Press, 2014), Anxiety and Lucidity: Reflections on Culture in Times of Unrest (Routledge, 2020), and recently Emancipatory Power of the Body in Everyday Life: Niches of Liberation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).

Michał Stambulski is Assistant Professor in Legal Theory at the Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands), and a visiting professor at West University in Timisoara (Romania) and Oñati International Institute of Sociology of Law (Spain). He was a 2023 Emile Noël Global Fellow at the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law & Justice, New York University. His recent publications address the issues of rule of law, constitutional populism, legal mobilization, and strategic litigation in Europe.

Wojciech Ufel is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Wrocław (Poland) and a researcher in the Horizon2020 project EUARENAS at the University of Wrocław. He specializes in political theory, particularly contemporary debates on participatory, deliberative and radical democracy as well as populism. In his research he applies political philosophy based on Ludwig Wittgenstein's approach to 'language games', together with postcolonial, posthumanist and critical theories, also to empirical research and social practice. He was a visiting researcher at The New School for Social Research, University of Brighton (UK), and Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic). He collaborates with municipalities and civil society organizations in Poland and beyond in the organization and evaluation of participatory practices.

Rafał Włodarczyk is Associate Professor at the Institute of Pedagogy at the University of Wrocław (Poland). He specializes in educational theory, general pedagogy and the philosophy of education. His research interests also concern social theory and philosophy, ethics, cultural anthropology, and the borderland of Western and Jewish thought. He holds a Ph.D. and Habilitation in Social Sciences. He has published four monographs, including (in English) Utopia and Education: Studies in Philosophy, Theory of Education, and Pedagogy of Asylum (Wrocław, 2022, open access). He is the author of several articles and co-editor of works in Polish and English.
Its primary target is researchers in humanities and social sciences: sociology, philosophy, political science, cultural studies, cultural anthropology, psychology, pedagogy, philology, and literature studies. Any academic working on issues related to the study of the phenomenon of populism and its socio-cultural conditions would be interested in this volume.
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