Workshops > Populisms in the Americas in the Era of Post-Truth

Wednesday, October 1st from 4:30 PM to 6:30 PM

Centre des Colloques, room 3.02

Abstract :

Because of its historical roots and its centrality in Latin American politics, populism is one of the main subjects of study for Latin American researchers in the social sciences and humanities. From the waves of statist populism in the 1930s to the wave of so-called "left-wing" populism in the 2000s, via the neoliberal populisms of the 1990s, the populist phenomenon has had a profound impact on Latin American societies, to such an extent that the Canadian-Argentinian sociologist Victor Armony recently asked "Is it possible to do politics in Latin America without being a populist? The United States and Canada have also been confronted with this protean phenomenon. From the emergence of the People's Party in St. Louis in 1892 to the Truckers' Convoy in Ottawa in 2022, via the Tea Party at the start of the Obama presidency and then 'Trumpism', this northern area of the Americas has seen a wave of populist formations, movements, practices and discourses that have durably structured the political game. The Caribbean has not escaped this trend either. Since the governments of Carlos Prío Socarras in Cuba and Daniel Fignolé, then Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti, who set themselves the goal of broadening their client base by turning directly and personally, beyond institutional mediation, to the excluded, the disaffected or the most destitute, several Caribbean island states and territories have experienced highly personalized, anti-system experiments often described, rightly or wrongly, as populist.

What does populism refer to today? At a time when many analysts are invoking an era of "post-truth", the continental and island states of the Americas, from Canada to Argentina, via El Salvador and the Dominican Republic, seem to be affected by unprecedented populist forces and discourses. The primary scientific ambition of this IdA 2025 Congress workshop is to bring together a panel of American specialists from the fields of social and human sciences (history, anthropology, sociology, political science, economics) to identify and analyze the latest developments in populism. In order to take the full measure of the new societal, political and economic challenges posed by this ever-changing phenomenon, participants will be invited to provide elements of reflection, if not answers, based on a series of open-ended questions: is post-truth a new reality likely to shape political life in the American world as a whole? Without neglecting the discussion on the scientific relevance of a concept as ductile as 'populism', does the manufacture and proliferation of fake news through social networks and their instrumentalization by political leaders, parties or movements allow us to speak of digital populism? What role can institutions and political cultures of the Americas play in the emergence of specific forms of 2.0 populism?

By favoring a multidisciplinary, trans-American and comparative approach, the panel will aim to reflect a diversity of variables and observable cases, in North America as well as in Latin America and the Caribbean, helping to sketch out sui generis configurations likely to shed light, through comparison, on how other geographical areas function.