Arts and Humanities Workshop | Breve historia del antipopulismo: A conversation with Ernesto Semán

Date: 

Tuesday, October 11, 2022, 5:00pm to 7:00pm

Location: 

CGIS South, S216

To register for this event, please click here.

Speaker: Ernesto Semán, Associate Professor of Latin American History, University of Bergen
Moderated by: Mariano Siskind, Professor, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University

For this session, we will read and discuss the Introduction and Chapter 7 of  Breve historia del antipopulismo. PDFs available below

Now in its third edition, “Breve historia del antipopulismo” (Buenos Aires, Siglo XXI Editores) is the first study of the vast power of antipopulism movements, leaders and ideas in Argentina and of how they have shaped the country’s modern history up to these days. Most works on Latin American politics focus on populist movements as the single most significant contribution of the region to modern political language. In Argentina, the rise of Peronism in 1945 is an iconic moment of this particular incorporation of urban working classes into modern political systems. Semán explores how the most vitriolic rhetorical opposition to this eventful moment set in motion an antipopulist identity that conceives the relation between masses and politics and intrinsically problematic. The book connects those postwar concerns with the past and future of the country. “Breve historia…” argues that Argentina has been founded upon the warning against a plebeian threat to political and social order and the perpetual promise to contain, hold or repress this threat. As such, the book is an interrogation on the long-term roots of anti-plebeian perspectives, representations and policies in Argentina. El Gaucho, el Compadrito, el Cabecita Negra and the Choriplanero—the book analyzes these four critical representations of the intersection between masses and politics that permeated political culture throughout the country’s two hundred years of history. A common thread emerges in that picture: masses are always imperfect political subjects, prone to emotional decisions, personal attachments and economic subordination. But during the last half century, this representation of mass politics became the platform of a robust rightwing political movement ready to challenge the notion that equality, social rights and the ensuing institutions designed to guarantee them are an intrinsic part of democratic society. But the battle against a vague enemy such as “populism” is above all a formidable platform for the consolidation of a political identity. Rather than an opposition to a political phenomena, antipopulism, in its unhyphenated spelling, presents in itself a comprehensive vision of how the polity should be erected around the notions of economic property rights and individual freedom.

Ernesto Semán teaches history at the University of Bergen, Norway. He has written extensively about Latin American history and politics and his books include fiction, non-fiction and academic works. His articles have been published in The New York Times, The Financial Times and The Washington Post, among others. Semán’s last book is “Breve historia del antipopulismo” (Argentina, Siglo XXI Editores).

The Arts & Humanities Workshop Series fosters scholarly discussions centered on the work of leading academics in the fields of the Arts & Humanities.