Affective Governmentality, Gender and the Rise of the Authoritarian Populist Right

Across Europe authoritarian right-wing populists join anti-gender debates to re-establish traditional gender relations and to re-affirm masculinity. This anti-gender mobilisation is part of an affective mobilization strategy of the authoritarian right, the mobilization of fear of loosing wealth and social security, of anger towards those depicted as ‘Others’, of new exclusive solidarities and securities (love for Heimat, love in heterosexual relationships/families) and the promise of a better future (with right-wing authoritarian leadership). The paper suggests to understand this affective strategy in the context of a neoliberal mobilization of affect, i.e. a ‘neoliberal affective governmentality’. This neoliberal form of governing through affects included the mobilization of affects at the workplace, be it the commodification of affects or the production of precariousness and insecurity, of fear, envy and shame (of failure), as well as un-leaching passion and aggression against the allegedly unsuccessful. Hence, the authoritarian populist right on the one hand works with these affects and on the other hand promises to compensate shame through anger and to reclaim agency through leadership and affective masculinism. The paper takes the examples of Austria and Germany to analyse these gendered populist affective strategies.