Intellectuals and the Crisis of Politics in the Interwar Period and Beyond: A Transnational History

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of modern European crisis discourses and focuses primarily on the interwar period, commonly described as a paradigmatic case of the crisis of modernity, and then follows through to the present day. It explores how the multiple crises of civilization, capitalism, social cohesion, liberalism, democracy, socialism, or the nation-state were conceptualized, how and to what extent these spheres were entangled, tracing also the multi-level dialogue of intellectuals, politicians, and experts who employed these discourses. The modern concept of crisis combines analytical and mobilizing functions and seeks to establish causal relationships, identify possible trajectories and alternative histories, and rearrange the discursive space by redefining the temporal and spatial coordinates of collective existence. Thus, discourses of crisis are rooted in various regimes of temporality and spatiality. Along these lines, the book provides a geographically and thematically inclusive re-narration of European intellectual history, weaving Eastern, Southeastern, Western, Northern, and Southwestern perspectives together. It de-centers the dominant narrative that takes Western European positions and developments as normative and adds the others as “exotic” peripheries. Within this broad canvas, the book pays special attention to two key contemporary contenders of liberal democracy: neoliberalism and populism. Drawing on, but also going beyond, the historical contextualization of these two streams, the book also explores how a reflective and self-critical liberal democratic political position might be delineated and defended in our current predicament, increasingly compared by observers to the interwar period, and often described as “polycrisis.”