In the face of new masters: the crisis of neoliberalism and recourse to personal charisma

During the last decade, we can observe rising support for right-wing leaders who produce a discourse of semblance of strength. These leaders, the new masters of politics, concentrate on the performance of political charisma and manifest a disregard for the norms of the contemporary public sphere. Using Jacques Lacan’s theory of discourses, this article argues that there is a structural relation between the discontents in neoliberal forms of power and the success of these leaders performing the theatre of charisma and political dominance. The key to understanding the rise of the new masters of politics is the relation between the discourse of the master and that of the university. The political prominence of the new masters of politics can be interpreted as a precise reaction to the form of power dominant in neoliberalism – bureaucracy operating according to the norms of economic rationality. The main aim of this paper is to provide a theoretically informed interpretation of discourses of semblance of strength in the broader frame of the historical moment of a crisis of neoliberal form of power.