Ontological Insecurities and the Politics of Contemporary Populism

Brent J. Steele is the Francis D. Wormuth Presidential Chair and Professor of Political Science at the University of Utah, and the co-editor in chief of Global Studies Quarterly. He is the author of Restraint in International Politics, which co-won the ISA Theory section book award for 2020, and the co-author of Vicarious Identity in International. Alexandra Homolar is Reader of International Security at the University of Warwick. She has published widely on issues at the intersection of language, security, and politics, including in Security Dialogue, European Journal of International Relations, and Review of International Studies. She is the author of The Uncertainty Doctrine: Narrative Politics and US Hard Power after the Cold War.

Introduction: Ontological insecurities and the politics of contemporary populism 1. Brexit populism and fantasies of fulfilment 2. Political memory after state death: the abandoned Yugoslav national pavilion at Auschwitz 3. Turkey’s ambivalent self: ontological insecurity in ‘Kemalism’ versus ‘Erdoğanism’ 4. Populism, ontological insecurity and Hindutva: Modi and the masculinization of Indian politics 5. Japanese revisionists and the ‘Korea threat’: insights from ontological security 6. Welcome home! Routines, ontological insecurity and the politics of US military reunion videos 7. The power of Trump-speak: populist crisis narratives and ontological security 8. The normative threat of subtle subversion: the return of ‘Eastern Europe’ as an ontological insecurity trope