CGF Seminar - Explaining the Right-Wing Populist Paradoxes: An Intersectional Perspective on Extreme Political Masculinities
Ov Cristian Norocel, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)
Abstract: To date, there are few explanations concerning the paradoxes of right-wing populism: privileged white men proclaiming themselves the true voices of white working class (men and women) against allegedly corrupt elites, and threatening migrant Other (men). In my study, I suggest a way to address these paradoxes by employing superordinate intersectionality as a theoretical perspective to examine how the right-wing populist discourses depict political masculinities through the interactions between several axes of difference and inequality: gender (masculinities); sexuality (heterosexuality); social class (elites); and race (whitenesses). In so doing I focus on the junctions between the field of critical masculinities studies and that of right-wing populism, which enables an
analysis of the gendered nature of right-wing populist ideology. I illustrate these theoretical articulations with examples
Bio: Ov Cristian Norocel is currently Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow, in the Atelier Genre(s) et Sexualité(s), Institut de Sociologie (IS), Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium); and Docent in Political Science, University of Helsinki (Finland). Norocel’s research interests concern the study of right-wing populist parties in Northern, and Central and Eastern Europe from a comparative intersectional perspective (focus on gender and sexuality; social class; ethnicity and race). He has published in such international peer-reviewed journals as Critical Social Policy, European Journal of Women’s Studies, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, International Journal of Communication, NORA: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Studies, NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies, and Problems of Post-Communism.