In March and April 2022, NTUS researchers Marina Vulović and Sabine Volk published their research in a special issue on the “Memory Politics of the Far Right in Europe” in the international journal European Politics and Society.
Edited by Stefan Couperus, Pier Tortola and Lars Rensmann, the special issue aims to shed light on the increasing role that memory and history seem to play in far-right mobilizations in Europe. Its six articles analyze cases from across Europe, and discuss diverse theoretical and methodological approaches to studying far-right memory politics. Together, they constitute a key contribution to cultural approaches in the field of populism studies.
In her article entitled “The Serbian Progressive Party’s re-articulation of the Kosovo myth within the internal dialogue on Kosovo, 2017–2018”, Marina Vulović analyzes Serbia’s claim to the territory of Kosovo within the so-called internal dialogue on Kosovo initiated in 2017. Her article offers a deconstructive reading of the Kosovo myth, conceptualizing it as a discourse in poststructuralist terms and focusing on citationality and re-articulation of its elements in other discursive constellations.
Turning towards (eastern) Germany, Sabine Volk’s “Resisting ‘leftist dictatorship’? Memory politics and collective action framing in populist far-right street protest” examines the strategic uses of the past in far-right protest at the example of the Dresden-based PEGIDA movement. Drawing from original ethnographic data, her article shows how historical citations sustain populist collective action framing, and emphasizes the constitutive role of memory for far-right mobilization.
Both contributions deal with crucial themes of the Kone-funded HEPP project “Now-Time Us Space: Hegemonic Mobilizations in Central and Eastern Europe” (NTUS), which investigates how politics of time and space shape collective subjectivities in this region.
To cite these articles:
Marina Vulović (2022) The Serbian Progressive Party’s re-articulation of the Kosovo myth within the internal dialogue on Kosovo, 2017–2018, European Politics and Society, DOI: 10.1080/23745118.2022.2058755
Sabine Volk (2022) Resisting ‘leftist dictatorship’? Memory politics and collective action framing in populist far-right street protest, European Politics and Society, DOI: 10.1080/23745118.2022.2058756