Notes on the Expressive Forms of the New Rights: A Dispute over the Subjectivity of the Majorities

Abstract

Analyzing contemporary fascism in terms of governmental practices allows for connecting and thinking about the relationships between leadership of the political system and what we call expressive forms of reactive affects. Reactive transgression, then, is an instance of a two-part movement: it breaks basic agreements of the democratic practices, but does so in the name of greater freedom; and, at the same time, it seeks to assure the return, now without “democratic” mediation, of more rigid patriarchal hierarchies. Neofascism is thus responsible for an enormous level of individuation for which it also seems to get ahead of the democratic interpellation that claims to sustain equality, but which is increasingly disproven in the everyday life of the majorities. “Resignifying freedom” thus implies, to a large degree, disputing and resignifying the very terrains that the new rights disputes and seek to monopolize.