Abstract: Building from my previous work on “right-wing intersectionality” (Ravecca et al, 2023) and the politics of innocence (Ravecca and Dauphinee, 2022) this talk will explore the question of what it means to study the far-right beyond self-righteousness. Both journalistic commentary and scholarship largely understand the far-right as an abnormality, that is, as the radical-other of democracy, liberalism, the liberal order, globalization, and modernity. This move not only mimics the “populist” scapegoating that is so adamantly rejected by liberals and progressives, but also carries a plethora of historical and intellectual inaccuracies. Against the grain of complacency, I argue that the rise of the far-right constitutes a powerful opportunity to exercise critique and self-critique. I look at how relevant aspects of liberalism, neoliberalism, political science’s conventional concept of democracy, and identity politics are appropriated, transformed (if necessary) and weaponized by the far-right. Furthermore, these reactionary forces have already been able to reshape mainstream conversations about important topics such as immigration, inequality, minority rights and more. Snapshots from the leadership and discourse of current Argentinian President Javier Milei will be used to illustrate the ways in which the far-right is redefining democracy and our contemporaneity in real time.
 

Speaker Bio: Paulo Ravecca has recently joined the Department of Political Science at Saint Mary’s University. For many years he taught at Universidad de la República, the premier university in Uruguay. His research program mobilizes Marxism, psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, and post- and decolonial theory to make sense of contemporary political challenges. Ravecca is particularly intrigued by the place that knowledge, thought, subjectivity, and narrative occupy in power dynamics and democracy. His work is methodologically eclectic as it borrows tools from comparative politics, political theory, International Relations, political economy, and cultural studies. He is author of The Politics of Political Science: Re-Writing Latin American Experiences (Routledge 2019) which applies critical theories and critical self-reflection to the discipline of political science itself, showing how knowledge is an integral component of power formations. Other themes of Ravecca’s research are narrative writing and the possibilities for scholarship, the politics of innocence in the context of neoliberalism, far-right politics and social movements, memory practices and human rights, and the challenges of being a Latin American theorist in the global north.
 

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