This volume offers the first global and systematic overview of populist politics of history in the twenty-first century. An international group of scholars interrogates how and why populists engage with the past. Twelve case studies focus on uses of history and memory by populist movements across the globe – ranging from Brazil to Bangladesh, from Poland to Tanzania. Five thematic chapters zoom in on key features of populism: its relation to time, nationalism, emotions, academic expertise, and the language of ‘moral remembrance’. The focus is both on left- and right-wing populism, as well as on oppositional populism and populists in power. This way, the volume presents an empirically rigorous and conceptually innovative analysis of populist historical reason.
Berber Bevernage is associate professor of Historical Theory at Ghent University. His research focuses on the dissemination, attestation, and contestation of historical culture in post-conflict situations. He has published in journals such as History, and Theory, Rethinking History, Memory Studies, Social History, and History Workshop Journal. He is a co-founder of the International Network for Theory of History (INTH).
Eline Mestdagh is a historian and doctoral researcher at Ghent University. Her PhD thesis investigates memory activism related to the colonial past in Brussels since 2010. Since 2018, she is one of the coordinators of the Ghent-based interdisciplinary research forum TAPAS/Thinking About the PASt.
Walderez Ramalho is professor of Theory of History at the State University of Santa Catarina. His current research focuses on the politics of time and history, the contested nature of the temporal borders between the present and the past, and the varieties of historical times and their reverberations in contemporary public discourse.
Marie-Gabrielle Verbergt is a meta-historian, sociologist of knowledge, and PhD student at Ghent University. Her PhD dissertation investigates the history of historiography in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
