The Immediacy of Populism and the Unrest of Democracy: A Phenomenological Inquiry into the Public Sphere

This chapter sets out to inquire how one may conceptualize a democratic way of dealing with collective attachments in the public sphere. The argument unfolds in three steps. First, Corrias shows that populism and liberalism present conflicting conceptions of the public sphere. Populism insists that the people can actually coincide with their attachments. The public sphere is understood as a Heimat. Liberalism cleanses the public sphere of attachments and denies the need for roots. The public sphere is seen as a marketplace of ideas. Secondly, he argues that both of these conceptions build upon a flawed understanding of the relationship between a collective subject and its values or strong attachments. Contrary to both liberalism and populism, Corrias, thirdly, presents a view in which democracy’s subject is understood as decentred giving rise to a constitutive unrest. The public sphere is the place to deal with this unrest.