Discussions around ‘post-truth’ have been dominating the media and academic debate following the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s election. They have also been generally seen as associated with populist politics, thus reinforcing dominant pejorative stereotypes. In this lecture we will try to scrutinize both the uses of ‘populism’ and ‘post-truth’ in order to move beyond such stereotypes. Our main hypothesis will be that (a) populism may not always be the ‘bad guy’ often depicted in relevant discussions, and that (b) the concept of ‘post-truth’ involves claims of (elitist) epistemic superiority that may explain its anti-populist flavor but also make it incompatible with a vibrant democratic political culture.

Yannis Stavrakakis studied political science in Athens and discourse analysis at Essex. He has worked at the Universities of Essex and Nottingham and is currently Professor of Political Discourse Analysis at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His research primarily focuses on psychoanalytic political theory and on the analysis of ideology and discourse in late modern societies. He is the author of Lacan and the Political (1999) and The Lacanian Left (2007). More recent publications include his introductory monograph Populism: Myths, Stereotypes and Reorientations (2019) and the edited Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalytic Political Theory (2020). He served as vice-president of the Hellenic Political Science Association and was Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Queen Mary University of London (2014-5) and Visiting Professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence (2019). He served as founding co-convener of the Populism Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association (UK) and currently directs the POPULISMUS Observatory: http://www.populismus.gr.