THE CRICKET'S LEAP: POST-OEDIPAL POPULISM AND NEOLIBERAL DEMOCRACY IN CONTEMPORARY ITALY

A new specter is haunting Europe—the specter of populism. The phenomena grouped under this indefinite rubric express a powerful opposition against the current politics of austerity of the European Union. Such an opposition takes different forms (parties, movements, online groups) and has different political valences. In Italy three different populisms have followed one after the other in the last twenty years: the ethnic populism of the Northern League, Berlusconi's televisual populism, and the digital populism of the Five Star Movement, founded by the comedian Beppe Grillo (whose last name means “cricket” in Italian). Analysis of this sequence involves a reassessment of the theorizations of populism, ranging from the most critical ones to the framework put forth by Ernesto Laclau in hisOn Populist Reason. Through a critical engagement with Laclau, this essay investigates those populisms that are born at the intersection of neoliberal biopolitics, the crisis of representative democracies, and unscrupulous use of the media, from television to the Internet.