Identity Politics Past and Present : Political Discourses From Post-War Austria to the Covid Crisis

Wodak, Ruth and Rheindorf, Markus (2022) Identity Politics Past and Present : Political Discourses From Post-War Austria to the Covid Crisis. University of Exeter Press, Exeter. ISBN 9781905816804

Abstract

This book traces the re-emergence of nationalism in the media, popular culture and politics, and the normalization of far-right nativist ideologies and attitudes in Austria between 1995 and 2015, by using a range of theoretical and empirical approaches in Critical Discourse Studies to identity politics, contemporary popular culture, far-right populism, and commemoration. Contradictory and intertwined tendencies towards renationalization and transnationalization have always framed debates about European identities, but during the so-called refugee crisis of 2015, these debates became polarized. The COVID-19 pandemic saw nation-states first react by closing borders, while symbols of banal nationalism proliferated. The data under discussion here, drawn from a variety of empirical studies, suggest that changes in memory politics – the way past events are remembered – are also due to the growth of migrant societies; the influence of financial and climate crises; changing gender politics; and a new transnational European politics of the past. Accordingly, the authors assess current challenges to liberal democracies and fundamental human and constitutional rights, and analyse how the pandemic contributes to a new renationalization across Europe and beyond.