ABSTRACT
This chapter explores contemporary anti-elitism as both a formation full of political paradox and a source of critical ambivalence. It begins from the paradox of elites performing as “ordinary people” against elites (as in the UK) in ways that trouble established critical conceptions of elites. This shape-shifting character of the “elite” poses problems about how to analytically and politically identify concentrations of power in the present. The chapter moves from this starting point into questions of contemporary populist structures of feeling – particularly those of anger and loss. There are continuing debates about how to make sense of reactionary political mobilisations (for example, in the UK, the USA, Hungary and more) that work with and on such sentiments. I suggest that such debates tend to a false polarisation (outraged ordinary decent people or racist and misogynist villains) when such forms of populism demand an attention to the politics of articulation. Attention to articulation brings into view the selective voicing (and silencing) of forms of popular discontent. It highlights the mobile and diverse mixing of multiple “isms” (nationalism, racism, chauvinism, nativism, etc.). It makes visible the contingent character of political blocs in the current conjuncture. And it makes it possible to imagine other voicings and mobilisations. For me, this concern with articulation, political contingency and the heterogeneity of social forces form the core concerns – and promise – of conjunctural analysis.
