Can the Popular Disembody Populism? Students and the Re-appropriation of the Nationalist Floating Signifier in Contemporary Indian Politics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6170699 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jean-Thomas Martelli (0000-0003-4555-179X, Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 7-20 |
| Publication date | 2021-04-08 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Studies in Indian Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2321-0230 • E-ISSN: 2321-7472 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/2321023021999140 |
| OpenAlex | W3155517856 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 20 |
This ethnographic account chronicles the journey of one of the largest anti-government protests since India’s independence. It examines the pivotal role of students—initially activists and then first-time participants—in crystallizing challenges to the ruling dispensation, not only by opposing it directly, but through subverting its way of claiming representation. More specifically, it is the strategic reuse of the pervasive anti-institutional and anti-elite discourse at the top—while replacing its majoritarianism with inclusiveness—that enabled protesters to disembody the populist modality of the current Indian Prime Minister. Protesters’ short-lived success was achieved through an enactment of the popular, embodied in a diffused fashion by faceless, peaceful and feminized protesting masses. The popular successfully appropriated the claim to be the people through invoking a ‘derivative’ nationalist repertoire in part shared by the government, emptying its anti-minorities subtext through appropriating floating signifiers of patriotic belonging such as the Indian constitution, the flag and the anthem. By engaging on how relatively small communities of politicized students used the campus ecology and its neighbouring spaces as territorial and ideational nodal points for the mobilization of less politicized cohorts, the article underlines their significance in the political articulation of dissent in contemporary Indian democracy
Appropriation · Constitution of India · Democracy · Dissent · Elite · Media studies · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Populism · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Gender Studies · Law · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies
Life as Politics
Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World
Elementary strategies of ethnic boundary making
Imagined communities
Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy
Populism and nationalism
Delegative Democracy
Political Theory of Populism
The Rise of the Second Dominant Party System in India
The subaltern in motion
Social Movement Continuity
Scattered speculations on the subaltern and the popular
Notions of community
Exceptionalising democratic dissent
On subalterns and other agencies
Rāmāyaṇa and Political Imagination in India
Multitude
Diffusion in Organizations and Social Movements
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |