Rights, Privilege, and the Populist Subject: Contested Grammars of the Political
Public keynote lecture with Mercedes Barros, researcher at the Argentine Research Council (CONICET) on how different interpretations of populism influence our view of contemporary political conflicts. The lecture is organized by the Research School FUDEM.
Abstract
Rights, Privilege, and the Populist Subject: Contested Grammars of the Political
Mercedes Barros
This presentation examines the contemporary crisis of democracy by revisiting the category of populism and putting into tension its increasingly widespread association with illiberalism. In recent years, particularly within European and broader Global North debates, populism has been characterized as a driving force behind democratic backsliding and as a concept closely aligned with illiberalism. This overlap has shaped much of the global conversation on the new authoritarian threats embodied in the rise of far-right political forces. However, this analytical framework rests on assumptions that sideline alternative genealogies of populism and constrain our interpretive capacity beyond the Global North.
My argument unfolds in three steps. First, I problematize the dominant association between populism and illiberalism: while this link illuminates certain political experiences, it also shows clear limits in other contexts. The case of Javier Milei in Argentina exemplifies this, as he is neither illiberal in the European sense nor populist within the Latin American tradition but instead identifies as anti-populist and as an extreme liberal, prompting alternative mappings of contemporary right-wing formations and their constructions of antagonism. Second, I turn to Latin American populism as a productive counterpoint which offers a conceptual and experiential archive in which demands for equality, social justice, and inclusion complicate linear ties between populism and democratic erosion. Finally, I examine current disputes over rights, increasingly reshaped by conflicting political grammars that recast them as privileges, “woke” particularisms, or external impositions. Reading these dynamics alongside Latin American populist traditions offers new insight into how popular subjects contest reactionary forces and how rights can be defended and reimagined today.