Demagogie und Volkstribune

Abstract

The paper is intended to outline a research programme that approaches figurations of charismatic representation between care (of 'the people') and accusation (of 'the others'). Late modern democracies seem to be increasingly confronted with 'populist' figures that claim to speak for an 'actual' or 'real' people, which institutionalised politics supposedly do not 'hear' and 'see'. The paper aims at these figures and their theatricalities by using historical models, such as the Attic Demagogos (demagogue) and the Roman tribunus plebis (tribune of the people). The reference to European political history and, in a second step, with the concept of 'charisma', also to European religious history, is not a rhetorical feint, but an attempt to get a view of the implicit historical relations of contemporary populisms through historical models of social logics of leader- and followership. <br> The argumentation follows a three-step approach: the first part of the paper asks about the "borders and frontiers of demagogues", that is: about how demagogic practice not only establishes, perpetuates and transforms limits, but how it makes them its original site of speech (I.). A second part asks about the vigilances of the popular tribunate; about a moment of sousveillance that allows institutionalised relations of governmentality to be inverted (II.). A third summarising section examines an establishment of demagoguery as vigilant and demagoguery as discrete practice in a model of charismatic representation, as an example of which the figure of former POTUS Donald J. Trump is presented (III.).