Paradoxical Right-Wing Sexual Politics in Europe

Paradoxical Right-Wing Sexual Politics in Europe (eds. Cornelia Möser, Jennifer Ramme, Judit Takács). Published by Palgrave Macmillan

How could far-right, hateful, and anti-democratic ideologies become so successful in many European societies? This volume analyses the paradoxical roles sexual politics have played in this process and reveals that the incoherence and untruthfulness in right-wing populist, ultraconservative and far-right rhetorics of fear are not necessarily signs of weakness. Instead, the authors show how the far right can profit from its own incoherence by generating fear and creating discourses of crisis for which they are ready to offer simple solutions. Drawing on studies about Poland, Hungary, Spain, Italy, Austria, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Portugal, France, Sweden, and Russia, the ways far-right ideologies travel and take root are analyzed from a multi-disciplinary perspective, including feminist and LGBTQI reactions. Understanding how hateful and antidemocratic ideologies enter the very center of European societies is a necessary premise for developing successful counterstrategies.

Cornelia Möser is a gender studies scholar at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. She works in the workgroup Gender Work and Mobilities at the Center for Political and Sociological Research in Paris. Cornelia recently published an edited book on queer/feminist critiques of the state, an article on gender as a useful category in philosophy, and another one on the feminism of Guy Hocquenghem.

Jennifer Ramme is a researcher at the Viadrina Institute for European Studies of the Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences at the European University Viadrina (Germany). Her research topics include critical spatial and aesthetic theoretical perspectives on conflicting gender regimes, feminist and LGBTQ* protest, and nationalism and right-wing populism in Poland.

Judit Takács is a Research Professor at the Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence. Her work focuses on social attitudes, family practices, childlessness, community engagement, and the social history of homosexuality. Currently, she is a Fellow at the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut (KWI), Essen, Germany.