The Populist Slipper

A not-so-secret sympathy links anthropology and populism. Nothing suits populism like a misfit, and no discipline is better attuned than anthropology to the kind of misfits and slippages that incite populism. Why did it take so long for anthropologists to broach the subject? And what else might be missing along with this anthropologically shaped hole? In this introduction, we make an argument about populism as a kind of symptom. This is not necessarily a term that all the symposium participants invoked, but it helps to pull together and make sense of a broad range of questions that arose in the course of our discussions. To that end, we sketch three versions of the populist symptom that run through this collection and consider how they link up with ethicopolitical preoccupations about the articulation of demands. Such an approach is empathetic, although not necessarily supportive, and it has the capacity to provide an intimate blueprint of populist reason but only if we are willing to listen attentively to the experiences that populist movements channel.