Over the course of Hilary Term (January to March) and Trinity Term 2017 (April to June), the Department of Politics and International Relations is convening a new seminar series on Ideas and Political Violence.
This series has been recorded and is now available in its entirety, along with an introduction from convenors Elizabeth Frazer and Jonathan Leader Maynard, explaining why they chose this topic, which parts of the series they found particularly interesting, and where they hope it will go in future.
The relationship between ideas and political violence is a key interdisciplinary interest of modern academia, and this seminar series seeks to capitalise on the expanding wave of new scholarship, bringing this into the DPIR’s research community and adding momentum to it by providing a forum for discussion between academic staff, graduate students, and visiting speakers on cutting-edge research work.
Coline Covington (Society of Analytical Psychology) presents a psychoanalytic framework for conceptualizing populism.
Covington addresses hot button issues such as Brexit and the Trump presidency through the lenses of loss, illusion, and group identity and anxiety through which political leaders are predicted to mobilize constituents. She links these concepts specifically to Freud's predictions for the development of the ego. Ultimately, Covington argues that populist voters are best understood not as uneducated, but as people who have suffered a percieved loss to their identity, whether real or otherwise. She suggests the only way to counter these powerful illusions is through time and a renewed reliance of the fundementality of the rule of law.